Hacker News: playing_colours

New comment by playing_colours in "What I gave up to become an engineering manager"

playing_colours — Mon, 09 Sep 2024 10:24:27 +0000

As a Staff and higher engineer you may be paid on the level of EM or Director. So switching the career track as an engineer beyond senior in most cases will not lead to salary increase.

Second argument is the assumption that switching to management opens the doors to much higher salary ceiling. In theory, yes, but realistically there is a strong competition for high level positions, few of us reach those places, and there is a big chance that one will simply stuck at a Director level position till retirement. Think if you enjoy management so much that you are ready to replace ability and joy of building things with more meetings, budget discussions, and politics.

Particularly in Europe with our taxes the benefits of slightly higher income may not have a sensible impact on your life.

New comment by playing_colours in "Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun"

playing_colours — Wed, 08 May 2024 17:34:38 +0000

Can you share any example of non-fiction literature with beauty and humanity? Thanks!

New comment by playing_colours in "Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest"

playing_colours — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 17:19:00 +0000

Have you tried autoimmune protocol diet? Anecdotally, but it may help.

New comment by playing_colours in "The day I canceled my Spotify subscription"

playing_colours — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 20:42:25 +0000

I was lucky to have a few friends sharing my passion for metal. Anyway there were quite a lot of magazines about metal music. They really helped me to discover new styles, bands, and releases.

Oh how I enjoyed reading the reviews of the new albums back then! Some journalist were very talented in describing the music in tasty details and I was longing for the moment, when I buy and listen to the long awaited CD.

New comment by playing_colours in "Ask HN: With all the layoffs – how are you?"

playing_colours — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 12:58:17 +0000

If you have motivation and time, find a niche, a project you are interested to dig into. Spend a month on learning about it, write some code. Then contact OSS contributors working in that area, show interest to learn and contribute. It may work. Good lick!

New comment by playing_colours in "Databases and why their complexity is now unnecessary"

playing_colours — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 19:16:04 +0000

Did you roll out your own implementation of Outbox pattern? It is an important pattern to address potential data inconsistencies, but I did not see yet a good scalable implementation of it.

Product Management in the internal platform teams

playing_colours — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 15:30:04 +0000

There is quite a recent trend to introduce internal Platform, Dev Tools, or Data Platform teams. I would like to learn more about different approaches of organising Product management there: collecting requirements, ideation, communications. How engineers can be more involved in product design, rituals, etc. I can hardly find any information beyond very superficial. Can you suggest any sources? Thanks!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38532123

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by playing_colours in "Architecture Antipatterns"

playing_colours — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 12:25:41 +0000

Apart from the patterns that are obviously good or bad by definition, most of the patterns and architecture decisions have their pros and cons, and the focus is on understanding, discussing those tradeoffs, and going with tradeoffs that a team / company prefers to deal with. Monolith vs. microservices, synchronous vs. asynchronous communications, small events vs. fat events - the list can go on, there are no silver bullets or clearly right choices.

New comment by playing_colours in "Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?"

playing_colours — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 14:09:30 +0000

What sources for learning do you use?

New comment by playing_colours in "Singapore: Right to own a car costs $76,000. And that doesn't include the car"

playing_colours — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 08:30:16 +0000

It is true for Copenhagen, but I wonder how it feels to families living in rural areas.

New comment by playing_colours in "When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)"

playing_colours — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 20:19:02 +0000

I think it is a matter of culture. I personally would prefer a straightforward approach, and I think many of my German colleagues, but I think my British colleagues would prefer that indirect way of communications.

New comment by playing_colours in "At this company, we are family"

playing_colours — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 17:29:31 +0000

In Germany we have probation period of 6 months that helps both sides to decide if they want to continue employment.

Can you please explain the causation between easiness of firing / hiring and high salaries?

How to become structured and clear in communications

playing_colours — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 18:00:38 +0000

I recently got a feedback in my interview process that I should be more structured and clear in communications, particularly on the topics that are broad and complex like approaching monolith refactoring, pros and cons of some technologies. I tend to sometimes quickly over points or vice versa versa go unnecessary deep into details, or divert into connected topics.

Can you please give any advice, recommend a book or something else to improve my communication skills. Thank you!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36539423

Points: 2

# Comments: 4

New comment by playing_colours in "Color Photos of Stalin-Era Soviet Union Taken by a US diplomat"

playing_colours — Sat, 03 Jun 2023 19:01:25 +0000

My grandpa worked as an engineer at one of the freezer-warehouses where they also produced ice-cream. It was end of 80s - mid 90s in USSR. He brought a lot of it home, and my fridge was always filled with 1-3 sorts of it. Sweet childhood time :)

New comment by playing_colours in "Culture Is Stuck"

playing_colours — Sun, 16 Apr 2023 19:16:24 +0000

How do you find them?

New comment by playing_colours in "Culture Is Stuck"

playing_colours — Sun, 16 Apr 2023 18:47:18 +0000

Very interesting to learn a bit about Berlin’s culture scene. Do you write in German or English?

New comment by playing_colours in "Ask HN: What have you been getting obsessed about lately?"

playing_colours — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 16:37:25 +0000

German language. I live in Germany for quite a while, but only recently decided to invest in the language properly. Now I am about B2. My goal is at least to get to the level where I can properly work in a managerial position at a German-speaking company.

I have classes with a tutor 2 times a week. I think German is a bit harder for me to learn comparing to English, the main issue is active vocabulary. I regularly check different approaches how to learn the language faster. So far, Anki and reading the literature I both like and can comprehend at my level are the best techniques.

New comment by playing_colours in "Should we care about people who need never exist?"

playing_colours — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 22:03:47 +0000

There is a good short story “Progeny” by Philip Dick about AI raising human children ;)

New comment by playing_colours in "Przewodów village in Poland hit by two Russian missiles, two dead"

playing_colours — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 23:19:29 +0000

They probably mixed target and launch coordinates when they programmed the missiles.

New comment by playing_colours in "Telling people you're a self taught developer in YouTube is a big business now"

playing_colours — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 13:23:27 +0000

>> Do you think it's practically possible to learn everything without any structure, discipline?

You can learn something superficial without any structure and discipline, but structure and discipline are essential for progress in any learning: be it programming, foreign languages, etc.

There is nothing arcane about acquiring new skills. Plan at least a few steps ahead, set some medium term achievable goals. You need to have both theoretical (CS, frameworks) and practical (build something) parts in your studies.

University can give you some start, but if you want to be successful at work you need to learn how to learn, and it is a life-long activity.