Location: Denver, Colorado (CO)
  Remote: Yes, or hybrid, or on-site.
  Willing to relocate: Yes, within Colorado, east coast USA, or EU/UK 
  Technologies: C++, C, Python, (Java|Type)Script, assembly (ARM, MIPS, SHARC), Linux (userspace), Linux (kernel), embedded Linux (buildroot, Yocto, OpenWRT, uboot, grub), networking (802.11n,ac,ax,be,k,v,r,s, hostapd, wpa_supplicant, nl80211), , Windows (kernel, C runtime, MFC, WPF, C++, C#), Docker
  Résumé/CV: https://tuckerpo.me/ or curl https://tuckerpo.me/short-resume | jq
  Email: tuckerpolomik[@]gmail.com

I'm a Senior Systems Engineer who specializes in making complicated systems actually work. My background is primarily in C and C++, Linux, embedded systems, networking, and low-level software development.

Over the past 8+ years I've worked everywhere from bootloaders, firmware, and Linux kernel modules to networking daemons, distributed systems, protocol implementations, backend services, and production user-space applications. I'm comfortable moving between hardware bring-up, operating systems, networking stacks, and application-layer software depending on what the problem requires.

I have particularly deep expertise in Linux and wireless networking, including 802.11 protocol development, Linux networking subsystems, hostapd/wpa_supplicant, OpenWRT-based platforms, authentication systems, cryptography, and large-scale connectivity infrastructure. My work has resulted in conference talks, published papers, patents, and contributions to major open-source networking projects. I'm additionally involved in standards bodies like the WFA, IEEE, and CSA, so very well versed in Wi-Fi infrastructure, standards, and implementation.

I tend to thrive in environments where engineers are trusted to solve difficult technical problems, own systems end-to-end, and ship software that customers actually use. Whether it's debugging kernel crashes, chasing race conditions across distributed systems, designing protocols, optimizing performance, or bringing up entirely new platforms, I'm happiest when working close to the technology.

Currently interested in systems programming, embedded Linux, infrastructure, backend engineering, networking, security, developer tooling, and performance-critical software.

If you need someone who can move comfortably between kernel space, user space, networking stacks, operating systems, back-end dev, front-end, mobile, and production software without needing n-many separate specialists, I'd be happy to chat.

We are constantly overworked and relatively underpaid… while the majority of our peers are chronically under-worked and wildly overpaid.

At my current job, I’m now starting work at 6 AM and wrapping up around 5:30 or 6 PM, five days a week. It’s meeting after meeting, plus deep technical work that actually moves the needle. And in the middle of this, my boss will randomly ping me for “status updates,” as if I might be kicking back on the beach instead of drowning in deadlines.

Meanwhile, the managerial class — from what I can tell — spends their days in “alignment sessions” and “strategy syncs”, sends a few vague emails, and leverages the work of their teams to look busy. This specifically is something I've noticed my entire SWEng career: middle-management, product managers, managers will *use you*, the engineer, as a mechanism to appear useful (i.e. PM can just say "Yeah, I've got tuckerpo working on that.", somehow commanding a gigantic salary).

And hell, it's not even exclusive to management: I've got a half dozen buddies working remote for Nvidia, absolutely SWIMMING in RSUs, like, newly minted millionaires, who will come to my apartment in the middle of the work-day to "hang out", for hours, while supposedly on the clock. These are Principal+ engineers.

My wife’s story is even more absurd. She’s in the office from 7 AM to 6 PM, buried in work. Her peers? Many openly admit to doing maybe two hours of actual work a week, sometimes calling her just to chat because they’re “bored.” When she raises her workload with management, she gets gaslit: told it’s a “time management” problem, as if her 11-hour workdays are just the result of her not using the right productivity app. Again, not a one-off deal, consistent trend across roles at several companies for her.

We both feel like we’re starring in The Truman Show. We’re surrounded by people who seem to have cracked some secret corporate code... getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to appear important while producing very little tangible output.

So, a few questions for readers here on HN:

- Is this just us? Are we somehow in a doomer echo chamber of two, convincing each other that we’re the only ones actually doing work?

- Or is this a widespread thing across industries? Do you feel it too?

- Are we total jamokes for actually working?

- And the real question: how do we get in on this game? How do you climb into that gilded $250k+ corporate tier where your main deliverable is a calendar full of recurring Zoom calls and the occasional “per my last email”? Do we get MBAs? Learn to politic and schmooze?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44870881

Points: 13

# Comments: 5

Most corporations don't need nearly as many employees as they actually have, so if you can deliver exceptional results in 20 hours, why not dedicate the remaining 20 hours to another corp, and double your comp? Everyone wins.

HackerNews dudes claiming they do a true minimum 40 hours per week, every week, forever, of heads-down hard-work are deluding themselves. I really don't understand the overemployment hatred this forum has. There are plenty of folks who really do solid work at 2+ jobs, not half-assing and politicking.

Disclaimer: I am not OE.

... why? If the guy's doing well by all metrics and not leaking IP, literally, who cares?

  Location: Denver, Colorado (CO)
  Remote: Yes, or hybrid, or on-site.
  Willing to relocate: Yes, within Colorado, east coast USA, or EU/UK
  Technologies: C++, C, Python, (Java|Type)Script, assembly (ARM, MIPS, SHARC), Linux (userspace), Linux (kernel), embedded Linux (buildroot, Yocto, OpenWRT, uboot, grub), networking (802.11n,ac,ax,be,k,v,r,s, hostapd, wpa_supplicant, nl80211), FPGA (VHDL, Verilog, Xilinx, Intel), Windows (kernel, C runtime, MFC, WPF, C++, C#), Docker
  Résumé/CV: https://tuckerpo.me/ or curl https://tuckerpo.me/short-resume | jq
  Email: tuckerpolomik[@]gmail.com

Strong C++/C background, systems-level orientation. I’m at home in resource-constrained, real-time, or just-plain-hostile environments. Embedded Linux, networking stacks, wireless protocols, FPGAs, weird bootloaders—if it’s not glamorous and people usually avoid it, there’s a good chance I’ve done it. Currently getting into Rust and Zephyr in my free time. Also very very strong background in networking/Wi-Fi, with several talks, published papers, and patents.

Looking for roles where software is the product, not an afterthought. I’d prefer to avoid places where Jira boards are sacred texts, architecture is decided by slide deck, and everyone’s calendar is 95% “syncs” to discuss work nobody’s doing. If your team measures value in working code and shipped products, and not in "alignment", we’ll probably get along.

Spoken at conferences (NetworkX, prpl Summit, SCTE Expo), given demos to customers, and generally enjoy making things that actually work.

If you’ve got an interesting problem, and you aren’t staffed wall-to-wall with MBAs LARPing as engineers via spreadsheet, shoot me an email.

In my case, it was a slow, creeping decline. I started out hungry: shipping quality work, stepping up for projects well beyond my role and pay grade, even leading teams through fire drills and heroic launches. And the reward? A generic "atta boy!" and more work. Never the raise, the title bump, or real recognition.

My attitude over the span of years regressed considerably, shifting from a bright-eyed aw-shucks happy-go-lucky get-it-done engineer, and asymptotically approached, "dude, please leave me the fuck alone" whenever I heard a Teams ping or an Outlook inbox notification.

Really just smells like symptoms of extreme burnout, the input of which can only be determined by talking to this person. Could be 10 years is far too long in one job and they just want to coast now, could be personal reasons like a divorce or death of a close relative, could just be mid-life crisis, could be "I've got 1.8mm in my 401k, what're you gonna do, fire me?"

Here, there are no product managers, barely any formal management, and a remarkably flat structure. Most of the day-to-day work revolves around filing patents, writing papers, speaking at conferences, and building rapid prototypes that push the boundaries of what's technically possible, often years ahead of commercialization. In some ways, it feels like stepping into a time capsule of what R&D used to be: curiosity-driven, deeply technical, and untethered from the usual metrics, as opposed to today's modern R&D miasma aimed only at sand-bagging products/results to nab VC funding and then cash out.

But the catch: our funding rises and falls with the cable industry. When times are good, we explore bleeding-edge ideas in areas like low-latency transport, advanced Wi-Fi features like Wi-Fi sensing, quantum-key distribution over fiber, and next-gen access networks. When times are tight (like now), there’s a sharper focus on short-term, directly applicable work — sometimes even jumping in to help operators troubleshoot real-world deployment issues. It creates this strange duality where one week you're working on a speculative 10-year-out idea, and the next you're neck-deep in production firmware because a partner needs help _today_.

It's a fascinating place to work, but it does raise an interesting question: can long-term innovation really thrive when it's so tightly coupled to a volatile and risk-averse industry? Bell Labs had Ma Bell’s monopoly cash to float moonshots. We’ve got a much leaner model, and the priorities shift accordingly. Sure, we've got Comcast in our pockets, but our R&D charter states that no one member can dominate our funding or priorities: we're split among hundreds of members and vendors, and they all seem coupled to one another economically, so if the industry takes a dip, so do we. I’d be curious how others in applied R&D spaces manage that tension between visionary research and near-term deliverables.

I grew up poor. Trailer park, unemployed father, chronically ill mother. I did the "right" things, got degrees, worked my ass off in tech, climbed the ladder. And now, at 30, with a high household income, I still can’t afford a single-family home near my job. The American Dream has been geographically priced out of existence. It's a tautology: you need to be near economic opportunity, but that proximity makes the spoils of that opportunity unattainable.

And let’s say I could buy a house without draining my savings and becoming house-poor, what would I be buying? New builds are laughably bad. Developers optimize for speed and cost-cutting, not longevity or quality. Even the “luxury” apartment I rent, which was built in 2018 in a fairly affluent area, is $3k/month for water leaks, a cracked foundation, bargain-bin appliances, and slanted floors. It’s a high-cost, low-trust ecosystem. Everywhere.

What’s replaced those dead pathways is a schizophrenically fragmented collective ethos. A thousand micro-cultures screaming past each other about what actually matters. For some, it’s hustle and the entrepreneurial grindset. For others, political purity. Or aesthetic curation. Or spiritual awakening. Or personal brand optimization. Some chase passive income, others clout, others raw dopamine. One group preaches family values and self-reliance; another insists that simply surviving is oppression unless all conditions are ideal.

There’s no coherent worldview to plug into anymore. Just a buffet of ideologies, all half-digested and shilled beyond recognition. Each individual has to construct their own belief system out of whatever cultural detritus they happen to trip over. And the result is a populace with no shared reference point, just competing, incompatible theories of meaning, each as brittle and anxious as the next. A non-stop race to the bottom.

And when nobody can agree on what matters, nobody bothers to care. A Boeing tech doesn’t torque the bolt on a 787 properly because, why would he? No one else seems to care. Drivers treat public roads like a demolition derby because enforcement is a joke. People skip car insurance entirely because the odds of meaningful consequences are laughably low. If you're in a fender bender, just drive away! Nothing will happen to you. Steal stuff from the supermarket, nothing will happen. Why pay taxes for your small business? You're never getting audited! See an old lady getting mugged in an alley? Meh, not my problem. Nothing compels people to act in the collective interest anymore... not law, not shame, not pride.

The U.S. increasingly feels less like a country and more like a clown-show economic zone designed not to nurture citizens, but to extract from them, manufacturing wealth from thin air for a rentier class while selling everyone else the illusion of mobility. Unless you were born into money, got absurdly lucky with crypto, or won a scam lawsuit, the system is rigged to keep you running in place, and spare me the cope about “the best time in history,” when modern medicine is a privatized racket pushing pills over care and our “peacetime” economy is bankrolled by an endless carousel of proxy wars and every tech "innovation" in the last 15 years is just a new medium to drill ads into people's lives.

As Jon Blow once said, we live in a profoundly unserious country. And the logical endpoint of that unseriousness is a culture of nihilism, malaise, and quiet surrender. How do you fix it, or is it simply too far gone?

I begrudgingly started treating LeetCode and CodeForces like a game, and it turned out to be more engaging than I expected. I'm also 30 with a family, so I get the time constraints, but just 30 minutes a day for a few months made a huge difference.

Put it this way: If someone told you, 'I'll give you $500k, top-tier career opportunities, and a resume that opens doors, but you have to spend 30 minutes a day for six months solving toy programming problems,' would your sincere reply be "no thanks"?

  Location: Denver, Colorado (CO)
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: Only within Colorado, or to the one of the following: NY (upstate), VT, NH, ME, MA, RI, MT, ID
  Technologies: C++, C, Python, (Java|Type)Script, assembly (ARM, MIPS, SHARC), Linux (userspace), Linux (kernel), embedded Linux (buildroot, Yocto, OpenWRT, uboot, grub), networking (802.11n,ac,ax,be,k,v,r,s, hostapd, wpa_supplicant, nl80211), FPGA (VHDL, Verilog, Xilinx, Intel), Windows (kernel, C runtime, MFC, WPF, C++, C#), Docker
  Résumé/CV: https://tuckerpo.me/
  Résumé Short (JSON): curl https://tuckerpo.me/short-resume | jq
  Email: tuckerpolomik[@]gmail.com

I am a generalist with a very broad set of experience, with expertise in system's programming using strongly typed languages. I've done everything from bare-metal assembly code, to FPGA gateware, to Linux kernel modules, to Windows GUI work, to front-end web development. Very "T shaped".

I'm also a seasoned public speaker, having given talks at various conferences including NetworkX, prpl Summit, and SCTE Expo. Quite happy giving customer-facing demos, too.

My ideal role is where software is the product, and I can leverage my expertise in high-performance, resource-critical environments that value deep systems knowledge.

If you're looking for an industrious engineer who adapts quickly and delivers reliably, please reach out. :^)

  Location: Denver, Colorado (CO)
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: C++, C, Python, (Java|Type)Script, assembly (ARM, MIPS, SHARC), Linux (userspace), Linux (kernel), embedded Linux (buildroot, Yocto, OpenWRT, uboot, grub), networking (802.11n,ac,ax,be,k,v,r,s, hostapd, wpa_supplicant, nl80211), FPGA (VHDL, Xilinx, Intel), Windows (kernel, C runtime, MFC, WPF, C++, C#), Docker
  Résumé/CV: https://tuckerpo.me/
  Email: tuckerpolomik[@]gmail.com

I am a generalist with a very broad set of experience, with expertise in system's programming using strongly typed languages. I've done everything from bare-metal assembly code, to FPGA gateware, to Linux kernel modules, to Windows GUI work, to front-end web development. Very "T shaped".

I'm also a seasoned public speaker, having given talks at various conferences including NetworkX, prpl Summit, and SCTE Expo. Quite happy giving customer-facing demos, too.

My ideal role is where software is the product, and I can leverage my expertise in high-performance, resource-critical environments that value deep systems knowledge.

If you're looking for an industrious engineer who adapts quickly and delivers reliably, please reach out. :^)

  Location: Denver, Colorado (CO)
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: C++, C, Python, (Java|Type)Script, assembly (ARM, MIPS, SHARC), Linux (userspace), Linux (kernel), embedded Linux (buildroot, Yocto, OpenWRT, uboot, grub), networking (802.11n,ac,ax,be,k,v,r,s, hostapd, wpa_supplicant, nl80211), FPGA (VHDL, Xilinx, Intel), Windows (kernel, C runtime, MFC, WPF, C++, C#), Docker
  Résumé/CV: https://tuckerpo.me/
  Email: tuckerpolomik[@]gmail.com

I am a generalist with a very broad set of experience, with expertise in system's programming using strongly typed languages. I've done everything from bare-metal assembly code, to FPGA gateware, to Linux kernel modules, to Windows GUI work, to front-end web development. Very "T shaped".

I'm also a seasoned public speaker, having given talks at various conferences including NetworkX, prpl Summit, and SCTE Expo. Quite happy giving customer-facing demos, too.

My ideal role is where software is the product, and I can leverage my expertise in high-performance, resource-critical environments that value deep systems knowledge.

If you're looking for an industrious engineer who adapts quickly and delivers reliably, please reach out. :^)

  Location: Denver, Colorado (CO)
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: C++, C, Python, (Java|Type)Script, assembly (ARM, MIPS, SHARC), Linux (userspace), Linux (kernel), embedded Linux (buildroot, Yocto, OpenWRT, uboot, grub), networking (802.11n,ac,ax,be,k,v,r,s, hostapd, wpa_supplicant, nl80211), FPGA (VHDL, Xilinx, Intel), Windows (kernel, C runtime, MFC, WPF, C++, C#), Docker
  Résumé/CV: https://tuckerpo.me/
  Email: tuckerpolomik[@]gmail.com

I am a generalist with a very broad set of experience, with expertise in system's programming using strongly typed languages. I've done everything from bare-metal assembly code, to FPGA gateware, to Linux kernel modules, to Windows GUI work, to front-end web development. Very "T shaped".

I'm also a seasoned public speaker, having given talks at various conferences including NetworkX, prpl Summit, and SCTE Expo. Quite happy giving customer-facing demos, too.

My ideal role is where software is the product, and I can leverage my expertise in high-performance, resource-critical environments that value deep systems knowledge.

If you're looking for an industrious engineer who adapts quickly and delivers reliably, please reach out. :^)

I've hired interns and juniors at my past three positions, from various educational backgrounds including ivy leagues and ivy-adjacent schools (UCLA, CMU, for instance) over the course of the last ~5 years, and I'll give an opposing anecdote.

A lot of people who attend elite institutions are able to do so because they've been groomed from a very young age to have a given trajectory in life. Their entire existence and sense of self-worth seem to be predicted by "prestige" and being better than someone else.

This typically translates into someone who is very difficult to work with, especially when it comes to interns.

The "I'm clearly better than you because I attend $school" attitude, typically coupled with real-world industry naiveté leads to a real "I'm gonna change the world because I'm so special" Spongebob-esque archetype of person. Insufferable to work with, impossible to manage, always off spinning their wheels on something not at all aligned to what the business really needs. Ignore direction, ignore technical architecture, because they assume they know better.

I've also found that they don't really care all that much about their internships, because in their mind's eye, they're the "main character" and they're surely going to move on to something great because they'll be a $school alumnus.

They also tend to not be particularly well-rounded individuals. No hobbies, varying degrees of social ineptitude, anti-social competitive behaviors due to where they attend school.

I really could not care less about a "body of work", I care that you have some aptitude, passion, and are bearable to be around for >= 40 hours/week.

I get your point about senior engineers, a lot of people tend to mentally clock out and settle into their ways, no longer wanting to go above and beyond, typically because they have families, friends, hobbies, and no longer want to participate in a game where there are no winners.

But a clocked-out senior engineer who does the bare minimum, but understands how the business works will still be an order of magnitude more valuable than some $school intern.

> Of course, everyone is different, but I don't get the obsession with not giving very bright and talented juniors a chance even though they are more likely to be cheaper than seniors.

Unless you're working at some cutting-edge startup, businesses don't value merit, really, they care that you understand process, business needs, and the quickest path to execution to ensure continuous revenue.

Interns can be great, or horrendous, and I've personally found there to be an inverse correlation to how good the school they attended is to how useful they actually are in real industry terms. It's simply a trial period for both parties with the ideal outcome being they become a full-time hire once they finish their degree.

When money is tight, as it is now, there's simply no point in taking on individuals who will effectively be a burden for potentially months before delivering any real value.

Regarding your bus factor comment, businesses hedge that senior+ engineers will not be willing to shoulder the risk of job hopping in a shoddy economy, so there's really no concern from that angle of needing to "backfill" with junior engineers who will grow.

This will all get better when money begins flowing more freely again. Just a function of time.

We targetted a real SoC, though, so a lot of my implementation can be thought of as a "board support package" or HAL, twiddling LEDs, taking in input, TTY in/out, i2c, timers, IRQ/FIQ handlers, etc...

Assembly programming in general is more or less just getting a feel for any given ISA's most important instructions, mnemonics ordering and data/code separation. The rest is a walk in the park if you're comfortable with boring old procedural programming.

i.e. `bitbake bsp-vendor-full-image || beep && beep` so I get a sound when things finish, whether it failed or succeeded.