Hacker News: conqrr

Ask HN: Best pivot for SWE to work on satisfying engineering challenges?

conqrr — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 14:58:25 +0000

Most Tech companies in the US have become a sweatshop of LLM generated code. I'm looking for a pivot to an adjacent related field that isn't as badly affected. My initial thoughts are places in tech still exist where people are skeptical of LLM and use it with caution. Places that prioritize correctness over velocity. I have nothing against AI, but I do have a lot against its wild uncontrolled use for everything and a greedy, shortsighted leadership that currently controls the tech industry. I know there is going to be a reckoning at some point, but I don't want to wait for our industry to course correct.

I doubt other engineering fields (Electrical, civil, mechanical) are affected as much as Software Engineering is. What would be adjacent places that I can pivot to without starting from scratch and getting a degree.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47650105

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Show HN: Blobsearch – Object storage and DuckDB based Elasticsearch alternative

conqrr — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 22:55:48 +0000

Hey all, sharing my latest alternative to elasticsearch, cloudwatch etc that either require heavy cloud tax or cost more for a managed solution. This is a known pattern but maybe not well known enough to write logs to s3 as durable storage with Parquet and query rapidly with DuckDB. This has become the primary way I ingest logs for all my side projects and don't ever have to worry about losing logs and possibly free storage.

Features

    Format Agnostic - Works with any JSON log format via configurable field extraction
    Fast - 28K+ entries/sec ingestion
    Efficient - Parquet + Snappy (3.7x compression)
    Quick Queries - DuckDB queries in <50ms on 56K logs
    S3-Compatible - AWS S3, MinIO, DigitalOcean Spaces, R2, etc.
    Partitioned - Hive-style partitioning by date/level (no redundant part suffixes)
    Auto-Flush - Configurable automatic flushing (default: 90s)
    Dedupe - Optional deduplication

Happy to answer any questions about internals

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47432430

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Make your Linux keyboard act like a 'Tosh

conqrr — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 21:50:38 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/RedBearAK/Toshy

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47431859

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by conqrr in "Show HN: DenchClaw – Local CRM on Top of OpenClaw"

conqrr — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 23:06:44 +0000

This rings so true. Software Engineering should have stricter bar similar to med professionals. If we have leaked such lousy products and the public crowd thinks this is usable, it's a failure of the industry as a whole.

New comment by conqrr in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)"

conqrr — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 04:56:12 +0000

I needed a cheap alternative to Cloudwatch etc and didn't want to depend and pay Cloud tax.

Zero ops S3 based log search: https://github.com/amr8t/blobsearch

New comment by conqrr in "My ridiculously robust photo management system (Immich edition)"

conqrr — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 14:14:14 +0000

Immich and Restic have completely covered my needs and don't need to use Google photos anymore.

New comment by conqrr in "Ask HN: Do you have any evidence that agentic coding works?"

conqrr — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 10:51:42 +0000

Do you need evidence that auto complete makes you productive? It's stochastically useful. That also means a certain percentage of it will lead to garbage that could easily negate all the benefits. The lower you go down the stack, the more trickier it gets. We as humans are so obsessed with AI right now it's unbelievable. Lots of attention could be spent at other areas of innovation instead of obsessing on LLMs

New comment by conqrr in "The thing that brought me joy"

conqrr — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 02:49:47 +0000

Except that chairs (or anything that's automated today, even cars) don't rapidly evolve or are dynamic like Software is.

New comment by conqrr in "I rebooted my social life"

conqrr — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 15:05:05 +0000

What interests you? Id start one. In a densely populated city, odds are you will find a few people.

New comment by conqrr in "Singapore study links heavy infant screen time to teen anxiety"

conqrr — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 16:44:13 +0000

TV in the past didn't try to gaslight you into guilt or show all kinds of viral content and instant reactions. Except for news channels, most were slightly addictive at best. Even popular TV shows, you would have to wait for a week for the next episode and you couldn't binge. Screen time today is way different than even 20 years ago.

New comment by conqrr in "How I Left YouTube"

conqrr — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 23:45:48 +0000

> In the software engineering world, we exist on a ladder. We call this ”Leveling”.

Career is a made up game. There are no true levels or ladders in life that you have to chase. Nobody will care or remember what you did or what level you were given enough timespan. Take the bits that you want (money, skills etc) to live life, but don't get too caught up trying to win the game.

New comment by conqrr in "Don't Become the Machine"

conqrr — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 13:27:09 +0000

Very relevant talk by Osho: https://youtu.be/OGM7VFeLRyQ?si=ecB_6L8IRgIT4LD1 Efficiency is a quality of machines.

New comment by conqrr in "If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)"

conqrr — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 23:30:01 +0000

> With one key difference - it's not a gravity. It's just currently popular and dominating style in IT corporate culture. Mainly because it worked once for few successful companies and others cargo-culted it without much thought.

Sadly this is majority of tech industry. Cargo-cult whatever the big players are doing. But all is not lost. Lots of interesting smaller companies with highly technical people advocate for a tech culture that rewards real Engineering over Salesman/Politician. For instance, a FAANG resume with business impact bullet points will be pretty useless for a small team building a database. Someone with PR commits to open source Databases would hardly need to prove themselves.

New comment by conqrr in "Ask HN: Why isn't there competition to LinkedIn yet?"

conqrr — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 23:18:40 +0000

Linkedin is less of a job portal and more of a Social Network for the workplace. For the job portal, its more popular in tech but not the first stop for other industries. Which one are you trying to dethrone?

New comment by conqrr in "Thin desires are eating life"

conqrr — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:02:35 +0000

Liked reading this piece.

Thin Desires, Shallow work, Chasing Glitter, Mindless optimization on result, Non virtuous, Dopamine chasing. All are but the same. Burnout is our body's response to it. Philosophers have said this for thousands of years that they all lead to anything but happiness.

New comment by conqrr in "Show HN: Gemini Pro 3 imagines the HN front page 10 years from now"

conqrr — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 23:45:14 +0000

LMAO Google kills Gemini. Faraday cage for bedroom. So cheeky.

New comment by conqrr in "Ask HN: Better places to work for burntout SWE?"

conqrr — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 23:05:46 +0000

Seems like a useful criteria. I do enjoy a lot of slow migration work too as long the older systems arent too obscure. How did you go about finding such a company?

New comment by conqrr in "Ask HN: Better places to work for burntout SWE?"

conqrr — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 23:03:11 +0000

Thanks, were you ready to take a paycut for better criteria? If yes, how did it work out and how do you deal with the FOMO?

Ask HN: Better places to work for burntout SWE?

conqrr — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 22:50:19 +0000

I've tried my share of startups and megacorps, FAANGs. I am in a stage where I cringe on hearing a mission is so important that it needs a 996 culture. I also hate work getting stolen in the name of collaboration and politics in general thats daily business in Megacorps. I just want to bang out code, mentor juniors and deliver value in a small team that doesn't have an unhealthy obsession with growth or overworking. Maybe with rich founders who don't want to get more rich.

Where can I find good places to work, especially in the US that offer: 1. Remote first setting 2. Mission oriented like Privacy, non-profit background etc (or Open Source with proven history) 3. Holocracy/Flat structure

I think the above 3 criteria will really narrow down places that prioritize mission over growth/profits and automatically not pay a lot yet have a higher technical bar that deters a lot of folks who would end up optimizing for things that lead to a mess. Am I looking for a Unicorn?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46211822

Points: 10

# Comments: 10

New comment by conqrr in "I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA"

conqrr — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 02:15:25 +0000

Can I get an H1b for just 10hr/week like a part time job and be valid status in the US?