Spyke
kautaureply
lemmy.world

Yeah that sounds way more enjoyable, but first you need the 250k and up salary that a principal engineer at MS makes for 20 years, then you have plenty of equity to focus on whatever your hobby is

44
lemmy.ml

Average 350k according to levels.fyi.

I was expecting higher for principal tbh

18
kautaureply
lemmy.world

I think MS like other big tech companies has started to run out of "senior" positions without paying more so many people just end up as "senior" principal engineers which is basically "this is as far as you can go if you don't want to get involved in management"

13

“this is as far as you can go if you don’t want to get involved in management”

Yes. That exactly. This typically comes with a nice perk: Principals are supposed to have the same clout as lower-level managers. Which is to say they usually report to Directors or even the CTO in some organizations.

Another one is "Independent Contributor" which is similar but, as the name would suggest, is very self sufficient and does not work on (or for) a team. They're basically one-man engineering shops and are expected to perform well everywhere in the company's tech and talent stacks. As a result, ICs are very rare.

8
sfxrlzreply
lemmy.world

Jokes on programming. Hated life before being forced into it..

Edit: it meaning programming. This isn’t supposed to be that edgy.

18
Asafumreply
feddit.nl

Just try being uneducated and working in a dead end factory job while having hated life all your life anyway!

Much fun! -46/10 would never recommend!

I wish I was forced into programming... I tried on my own and just don't have the mind for it, I find it incredibly boring. All my friends are in the field and all work from home wherever the hell they want to live. I'm stuck in a VHCOL area with shit income and 0 potential to increase it :(

14
sfxrlzreply
lemmy.world

Yeah well I was „forced“ into it by an injury and one my parents working at the university. I never finished my degree so in that sense I’m also uneducated.

I didn’t have the mind for Uni stuff either esp. the maths stuff. There are so many areas. I just liked doing webdev stuff in my freetime and that landed me a few jobs.

5
Asafumreply
feddit.nl

I'm sorry you've had to suffer an injury! From what I understand, your experience now and your interest outside of work counts for more than the paper degree so if you do choose to continue that path I wouldn't worry too much about being uneducated. Good luck, I hope you find happiness in whatever you do!

4

Thank you very much! Yess school has never been for me but I’ve only been diagnosed with adhd when I was 21. so I’ve always struggled. I don’t know if it’s the perfect place for me, I’m still struggling from time to time, but let’s be honest who doesn’t. I never thought I could work 8 hours when I was younger. But here we are. So hopefully you can also find something you enjoy doing. And I wish the best for you too. Thanks again!

4
Codexreply
lemmy.world

You ever been around geese? Those terrible shits take shits everywhere, all the time. Loud, nasty birds.

21
idunnololzreply
lemmy.world

That sounds incredibly niche. Why not raise chickens or ducks :/

3

Bigger eggs and more meat. The cobra chicken is also a great security system.

4
darthelmetreply
lemmy.world

Maybe they’re raising an army of nature’s angriest animal.

5

You say that, but have you ever met a Sandhill Crane? They started coming back, and people think they're wonderful and majestic. Then they get too close, and find out they're feathery balls of pure hate with pointy beaks that will send you to the emergency room.

Appreciate Sandhills from a distance.

8

Maybe if enough programmers become goose farmers they will stop these fucking constant imbecylic unnecessary updates.

1
lemmy.world

I feel like the progression of my "Programming shelf" says a lot about my career trajectory as well.

76
Schmooreply
slrpnk.net

The programmer to homesteader pipeline is real.

24
Screamiumreply
lemmy.world

Just know that complete self sufficiency is a pipe dream, whereas community sufficiency is much more achievable

28

I wholeheartedly agree, I've been going down the pipeline myself and this has been my approach. Recently I've been working with family and neighbors to get a community garden going.

8
Daxtron2reply
startrek.website

You read some Thoreau and immediately wanted to leave society behind lol, I see you took his lessons to heart.

19

The other pivot point is The Pragmatic Programmer, which is totally understandable.

That book does a good job of grounding the reader through examples and parables from everywhere else but IT. By the end, you realize that good software engineering makes the best of general problem-solving skills, rather than some magical skillset peculiar to computing. You wind up reaching a place where you can begin to solve nearly any problem through use of the same principles. So @codex here, perhaps effortlessly, went on to management instead.

12
bl_rreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

What are those books on Doom and Wolfenstein? Is it the game development black book by sanglard? That’s the book I found with a bit of searching

9
Codexreply
lemmy.world

Yes, those are the Game Engine Black Books (Doom|Wolfenstein) by Fabien Sanglard. Highly recommended for anyone interested in games, programming, and history. They are amazing time capsules of those games and the development environments that produced them. I think/hope he's working on GEBB: Quake and I'm so excited for him to eventually release it!

14
bl_rreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

I’m gonna have to snag that doom book. I love low level programming and I’ve heard a lot about how hacky game dev used to be and that just excites me

3

Oh you're going to be in heaven, it's one of my favorite books! He really gets into everything: how the game is structured, how different subsystems work (BSP trees, enemy ai, sound, music, every detail), and even gets into peripheral things like how the game was distributed, how the (old) console ports came about, and so much more. The copy on my shelf is actually my third because i keep giving them away to people.

3

This looks uncannily like my shelf, I'm trying to buy land now for my permaculture forest 😭

5

Judging by The Dawn of Everything sitting next to it, I'd guess that book is Debt: The First 5000 years by David Graeber!

2

Thanks for reminding me about Art of Shen Ku. Friend had a copy years and years ago and from time to time I would remember reading parts but could never remember the title. Cheers!

4
feddit.dk

That's what a year of being a software architect does to you.

43
slrpnk.net

You spent all those years down in the trenches implementing bullshit designs an architect came up with, positive you could do better if you just got the chance. Then you go to graduate school to get the qualifications companies say you need to be an architect. You receive a masters degree. You're your companies leading expert on software design. You get promoted to architect.

That's when you find out the truth. All those previous architects left for the same reason you someday will. It wasn't the previous architects making the terrible decisions that frustrated you. It was the marketing team and the CEO telling the CTO that the software product must have certain buzzwords present in the design. Those buzzwords offer no value to what your software product is meant to accomplish. But if you don't put them in the designs, they'll fire you and hire someone who will play their games.

Eventually, you can't take it anymore. Having interfaced with the upper levels of your company, and having the understanding of systems engineering you do, you realize that every software firm will be this. There is nowhere you can go that will be better. You start saving.

Your goal is to save enough money to purchase a small plot of land and put an organic farm on it. Your convictions for this farm are simple: it must be able to feed your family. This may not be exclusively what you envision for it, and you may not even intend for it to be the only source of food for your family, but it will help you be less reliant on the kinds of corporation you've come to know and come to see as irrevocably evil.

And then sometimes, you get people like this in the post. Who find enough success farming to focus their energy on it exclusively.

54

I was in my first architecture review meeting this week.

The accuracy is infuriating and humbling.

20

If you give a shit about your work and the product you’re working on, then don’t work in a big company. In big companies, people are there for the money and maybe for a good looking entry on their resume, so they’ll only do what they’re being told to do, after all they’ll be elsewhere in 2 years tops.

If you have ideals and don’t just work for money, don’t work in the corporate world. Small to mid-size employers come with a lot less bs and more engaged co-workers.

10

Yeah, after 22 years at Microsoft in a senior position, you should be able to retire and do whatever the fuck you want as a hobby. I very highly doubt this guy will ever make significant money from goose farming.

41
lemmy.world

I’m a senior/principal engineer with 20+ years of experience and I can’t even think about retiring any time soon. All the posts in this thread are making me super sad. And the posted salary numbers are way higher than mine. :(

37
lemmy.world

I'd way rather be a duck farmer. Geese are noisy little bastards.

30

Yeah I was thinking farming geese has got to be complicated and awful work.

Entertaining for the neighbours though!

4
FauxPseudoreply
lemmy.world

Ducks are the grossest birds. Anything is better than ducks. I have 6 ducks.

2
FauxPseudoreply
lemmy.world

18 chickens, 7 geese, 6 ducks, 11 cats, 3 fosters, two dogs.

Today I turn on one foster kitten, the rest leave next week. Not sure if they will give me more when I drop off the one today. But if they have something extra spicy I'll probably get it.

Basically multiple types and the number is fluid. We've lost two chickens and two geese this year.

3
lemmy.world

Might be one of the few times a Lemmy post related to me.

I have owned a farm for four years, and do engineering for fun. AMA

22
lemmy.ml

How did you get into owning a farm, and what led you to engineering?

7

My grandfather is/was an electrician for over 60 years. Worked on very important projects in New York City. This rubbed off on me growing up. I spent much of my childhood taking things apart, figuring out how they worked, and putting them back together how I liked. I’ve been working on both hardware and software since I was 11. Had the privilege to study CS formally in high school, and Computer Engineering in university.

Good timing mostly got me into farming, especially since interest rates fell to the floor during the pandemic. Had enough to buy the acreage I wanted, and the wife was interested in helping out. We grow a variety of things now, and not just plants. For example we sell Honey, Soaps, Walnuts, and Mushrooms. It can be hard on the body to be so active all the time, but it is more satisfying than a monitor staring back at you at 3am because of some small incident.

I continue to tinker, and assist startups in my spare time, I can’t imagine I will ever stop programming.

10
infosec.pub

We have a principal software engineer who is a part-time farmer. He has chickens and cows.

17
lemmy.world

Man I'm starting to think I've got the wrong hobbies. Maybe I do need to get out more.

10
lemmy.ml

Okay, thats the response for rich people. Whats the offer for less rich who would like to "disconnect from the system"?

17

It's a case by case thing, obviously there's no single answer, it's going to depend on your existing skills, your location, the availability of geese, and so on

3

I quit my 20+ year career as a sysadmin about 2 years ago and started turning my backyard into a massive garden. I'm currently trying to figure out places to sell large quantities of hot peppers and I'm about to start selling matted and framed photos of flowers and wildlife from my garden.

Fuck IT.

16

i'm a data analyst. there's an urge to say fuck this shit and start a brewery. That urge is there every single day.

15

I used to be a Toolmaker long ago and far away. And there is a, and not undeservedly so, stereotype of Toolmakers as cranky old assholes. And the job tends to make us intolerant assholes.

I too had reached a point where I had enough of being angry, cranky, and hateful to everyone and myself every day. So I finally took all that cranky angry hatred and decided to channel it into something more constructive - I became a Medic for the next 15 years. And when that pissed me off enough I decided to teach math in my tiny rural school for 4 years until I retired.

I am a very slow learner........

3
lemmy.world

You should say "This is how something looks" or "This is what something looks like", but don't put the "how" and the "like" in the same statement.

That is not how it should look like.

13
lemmy.world

I worked in IT for 20 years. I became a handyman and have 7 geese.

13
FauxPseudoreply
lemmy.world

Yes and no. They are much cleaner than ducks and they can be exclusively fed on grass once they are feathered out. This makes them unbelievably awesome in addition to their guard dog ability. In the springtime you get giant goose eggs. Which is a big perk. Since we got our first two geese we have not lost a single chicken or duck to hawks. Which is why we got them. We were losing 1 to 3 a year just to hawks.

The downside is that like all birds they poop everywhere And their poops are more undigested grass than runny stuff. And in the spring when you get those giant eggs the geese can become extremely aggressive. This means separating them from the other birds to prevent injuries and it means learning how to wrestle geese in a safe manner. And it means always being on guard. You will not be safe on your own property.

But for me the benefits far exceed risks. They pay for themselves. They give giant eggs, they stop hawks, they mow the yard, they require no feed.

5
Got_Bentreply
lemmy.world

There were a bunch of geese around my grandparents' house when I was a kid. God those things would torment me. They had free range of the property and I tended to completely avoid the area they hung out because they were hyper aggressive and would chase after me every time I got anywhere near them. I was six years old, so it felt like they were as tall as me and they were definitely faster.

It wasn't so bad once I got a little older, a little taller, and relied more on my bicycle than my feet for movement.

Nonetheless, those things gave me childhood trauma to the extent that I still can't stand geese some forty five years later.

5

If they're not tormenting you, they're not doing their job. That's their niche. They have one job.

4
Hadriscusreply
lemm.ee

Not safe ? what do you mean, a goose can hurt people ?

2

Geese are legendary for their attack skills. They aren't bad most of the year but in the spring they will mess you up if you get too close. You can go to YouTube and search for "goose attack."

1
lemmy.world

The Venn diagram overlap of senior+ programmers and farmers is oddly large

11
programming.dev

I have taken a half step in this direction and it’s improved my life greatly.

I still have a normal job, but my Covid project back in 2020 was to finally put a koi pond in my back yard. I spend way more time learning and thinking about it than keeping up on tech shit. And the job I have now is great - I’m not trying to escape from it or anything.

The best part is that even the guy I bought my recent koi from has a microbiology degree. He’s properly living the “x farmer” dream, but that “job” is much more than a 9-5.

11
stringerereply
sh.itjust.works

Wait...you mean to say it's feasibleto have a cottage-industry koi farm for a hobby/supplemental income? I've been considering putting in a pond and looking at different ideas for what to put in it and koi are a contender.

4
Zinkreply
programming.dev

Oh no, the microbiology guy I’m talking about is beyond full time with his farm. He’s there 7 days a week when he’s not traveling to shows.

And that’s just taking care of the fish and growing them out, not breeding them. He imports from Japanese breeders.

As for breeding new babies and selling them, it’s certainly possible but there probably isn’t a ton of profit in it. Any time I’ve thought about it I’ve thought two things: I don’t want to deal with rando customers and I don’t want to turn my happy peaceful hobby into a job.

3
lemmy.world

Even farming eggs and gardening vegetables as a hobby is basically a p/t job for me. I do about 25-30 hours of work per week on my property, and some of that is just groundskeeping, then I work 40 hours at a 9-5.

But I wouldn’t trade it for anything lol

4

Yep, now with having my pond chores zen time and being able to enjoy the end results, I think I fully understand what gets people into gardening. I’ve just been forever obsessed with aquatic life.

2
lemmy.world

Not in computers. I'm an accountant. I don't have enough money to throw the double middle fingers. Can somebody please, for the love of all that's holy, show me the way out or, you know, come sneak onto my property when I'm not looking and delete me?

Edit: JUST now, I got told that I'm unprofessional because I refuse to give my personal cell phone number to all three thousand of our clients. I said that my private phone funded by my personal money is not a business asset and they can give me a company phone if they want me texting clients. This was met with a huff, turning of a back on me, and storming off.

10
lemmy.world

sell all your earthly possessions and buy two geese, one male and one female. then you, too, will be a goose farmer.

4

To avoid inbreeding issues you might want to start with a few more than that...

6

Damn it! It's Duck, Duck, Grey Duck! NOT goose!

***A Minnesotan argues about the important stuff

5

20+ years at M$ sounds like hell on earth. Might be better for mankind to work for 20 years at an oil company ffs

-4