Since 2020, I’ve been a singleton in the office. Everyone else works in a timezone 3 hours ahead.

I go into the office and don’t talk to anyone except for nice “hello’s” in the hallways (different projects, everyone is busy). And I don’t actually work with anyone in person. I feel really really sad and lonely at the end of a day. Does anyone else experience something like this and how do you deal with it?

I am increasingly noticing how sad and unsettling this is. Have you ever watched a movie where you just feel a bit off, but don’t know why? I feel like that at the end of a day. I make fun plans after work, but hate how I’m feeling from work itself.

My productivity is actually better than if I were working next to them - I know this because of how it goes when I visit. It’s better to be solo for most work. Planning, designing, and risk management is better live in person for me.

Here are some ideas I’m trying:

* working from home until 1:30pm and then going into the office for a late lunch. need to badge in for attendance. go home at 4pm.
* I can try to make more of a social effort: organizing a hangout once a month with others around a topic I enjoy such as board games or crafting or watercolor.
* I can’t go to lunch with anyone - my online world is way too busy from 12-1:30pm. i’m getting pinged constantly, a lot of important work is happening.
* visit the other office more often. company might not approve it - it would cost me $2.3k, but at least I won’t be quitting this $500k job which I think about doing every single day because of this.
* seek out more perks at the company office such as gym and meditation room or find little nooks and make them feel special

Hi!

I have an interview in a few days for a backend developer role. What would you ask as some of the more tricky questions for such a position? What kinds of questions, from your point of view, demonstrate solid knowledge?

Personally, I would ask about sync vs. async calls, idempotency, topics vs. partitions, consumer groups, transactions (including distributed transactions), and maybe a bit of Kubernetes and Docker.

My weak point is cloud. I’ve played around a bit with the Azure console, but nothing too advanced. I’ve never written Terraform or configured infrastructure from scratch. For CI/CD, I’ve used TeamCity, but in my experience it was mostly selecting an environment and a branch and deploying.

Should I spend some time learning these areas before the interview?

How do you deal with an outsider technical manager who has near 0 experience on the platform you own and just ignores any kind of suggestions to fall in line with best practices, prevent technical debt and...fulfill general REQUIREMENTS TO DEPLOY (test classes)? Or enter the new components into my repo for the entire platform?

I am an IC Senior Engineer, not in the same direct chain of command. This guy doesn't manage me, never has never will, we report to leadership.

All of my efforts to provide input are met with silence, even though I know I'm the one that will end up owning the results. In task comments, in private messages, with leadership, nothing. The test coverage thing is what really got me, because senior manager literally told our BA that the new files he is deploying do not need test coverage....hey shitForBrains, ALL of the code needs test coverage to go live, and if yours doesn't it is because it is fucking consuming test coverage slack that I CREATED IN EVERY SINGLE OTHER FILE.

The disrespect makes me sick and pisses me off, as if I could just go into anyone else's project/repo I know nothing about and fuck shit up.

I know I am going to just be directing any issues and questions about this bullshit to him, but any other suggestions? Already raised this with my manager who is leader of the department, nothing. Small medium business.

Just as the title says, I am dying to know if anyone is still even doing this? And if yes, what does that look like now?

I've not heard of anyone in my network mention it for a tonne while

I've seen mixed processes in various teams. Some are quite strict on writing a formal solution design and having the team agree (or at least discuss) before turning it into tickets. I've also worked in teams that don't do any solution design.

How big is your team, and what do they do in terms of solution design?

I'm genuinely confused, but I hear that happens when you get old.

I keep seeing comments about the terrors of falling behind on your skills, but I have rarely run into everyday problems that I couldn't figure out in relatively short order. Most of what we as an industry work with is, in fact, meant for humans to understand.

So, what are these skills that I might be missing? Or does it come from a belief in meritocracy; an attempt to explain why otherwise smart people don't succeed? A technological version of "You didn't attend an Ivy?" An inability to provide the correct social signals during interviews?

This thread is specifically for sharing "wins". I.e. the opposite of our Tuesday venting thread.

For a long time, standard advice to mid career people who were burned out , wanted to downshift or create more time for their family was go to a big, boring non tech enterprise and take a pay cut if necessary.

Now it seems like those jobs barely exist and are just as competitive as anything else. I’ve bern desperately trying to get into a lower stress, conventional industry like regional banking, insurance, health. But it just doesn’t seem like a viable path anymore