IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

Tinycoffin said:

I took a similar path been in the game for about 17 years now network / firewall engineer > Network Architect > Security Architect. Now I spend my time as pre-sales SME around infrastructure, IT strategy / Business. I wouldn't worry to much about the business side of things, you're probably going to be smarter then 99% of the people in the room. That is one of my biggest challenges dumbing it down to a level a fortune 500 CIO can understand.

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I considered going the pre-sales route as well (I've done a fair bit of it through the years). For $$$, that's definitely the way to go - and I may head in that direction later. But right now, the challenge of sorting out security for a big bank was very tempting.

Ao- said:

Can you get me a similar job there with relocation for my family from the Midwest?

I had a similar path... 5 yrs doing Unix server support (and firewall and desktop and everything else) for a small business, then I moved to megacorp and did 18 months doing desktop support, then 18 months Unix server support, then 2 years in our SOC (doing incident response and forensics), then 15 months doing enterprise security consulting, now 2 years doing data center security infrastructure, and I should be moving into Security Architecture in the next month or so.

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Yeah, that sounds similar. Why did you move from enterprise consulting and into data center sec?

Diving into the realm of building roms from Android Source. The stock rom we get from the manufacturer has a lot of stuff we don't need so we always end up getting the img from them, extracting it, removing things we don't need, and rebuilding it. However, it's still the stock img, just less fluff. We're also at the mercy of whatever version of Android the rom is. Currently stuck on Jelly Bean because of this (and other reasons I brought up at the old place).

A couple of weeks ago we got a Lollipop device in but I can't connect to it via USB and the Wifi is extremely spotty so doing any sort of debugging or app building over Wifi is laborious. I found a fluffless custom rom that works on the device but it has the same issue of no USB connection and spotty wifi. I did get some development in and it highlighted a huge problem I'm going to have to deal with, and soon, but it pushed me past the breaking point of needing to rely on outside people to get the build we're looking for in terms of an Android version.

So I've since downloaded AOSP and have spent most of the week working on what I need to do to target a build for at least one of our devices. Good times.

I'm basically getting no work done at work because of a couple guys constantly asking for custom changes. Usually they're pie in the sky type of ideas or even worse they broke some hardware and want a very weird change to see if I can fix it in firmware which is just dumb all around.

For instance, our new server is a single chassis with two nodes and the idiot tied the power to the same gpio so the boards were powering off the sister node randomly. His fix was to have me go through the cold boot path on a warm reset. Essentially a warm reset will assume a lot of things are still ok and skip stuff like memory init which takes a while. So essentially his fix was to make every reset be several seconds (10ish) longer because he fucked up. That's just bad design and I didn't feel good doing it.

He had me chasing this hang situation which was even more hilarious. He inserted a several second delay on board power on but before bios kicks off. I don't know why
.. I can only imagine. Anyways the Intel ME is extremely finicky and we have no control over it, go ahead try to Google it there's no info on it. He kept insisting there was a hang until I dug through the code and found the bios was waiting for a key press (F1) because the Intel ME was borked. He's now having me debug why the Intel ME is borked even though I already told him it was his delay.

Oh well in my stand up meeting Monday I can tell everyone all about this stupid fucking retarded ghost hunt I'm going on to fix God knows what because he keeps doing fucked up shit to the hardware. Meanwhile my boss things I'm not doing anything because my dev tasks in jira aren't moving.

I can't even multitask because the ide we use uses some stupid build exes that can't be run simultaneously so I can't even work on other tasks.

I don't even know how our printers work here

Also I develop on a MacBook that has a Windows 8 vm

Noodleface said:

I don't even know how our printers work here

Also I develop on a MacBook that has a Windows 8 vm

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I'm sorry..

Most days :

Noodleface said:

I don't even know how our printers work here

Also I develop on a MacBook that has a Windows 8 vm

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Windows 8. I don't even... I've never seen that used ANYWHERE

You want to know why I use a piece of shit windows 8 vm? Because IT does not support local windows vms. We need to use their shitty remote vms. The same remote vms that I tried 3 times to use and each time my build process brought down the server. Windows 8 is the only key I could "get"

Funnily enough they still email me to this day 9 months later about how they're still working on a Windows vm for me that will handle what I need. Ok guys, do you really think I've been waiting around for 9 months to start working?

It's fucking dumb

Noodleface said:

You want to know why I use a piece of shit windows 8 vm? Because IT does not support local windows vms. We need to use their shitty remote vms. The same remote vms that I tried 3 times to use and each time my build process brought down the server. Windows 8 is the only key I could "get"

Funnily enough they still email me to this day 9 months later about how they're still working on a Windows vm for me that will handle what I need. Ok guys, do you really think I've been waiting around for 9 months to start working?

It's fucking dumb

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I thought Docker and Vagrant were all the rage with you dev types, who would of guessed windows 8 VMs

I work for a second tier aerospace supplier and everything we do is pretty antiquated as well. Most of the problem is that we are audited by individuals who probably haven't been software developers for 30+ years. Thus, they treat software like it was back in the 80s and refuse to trust anything "new". Sometimes I'm surprised they let us use C to be honest. I had to fight to use Git for change control because the DER didn't "trust" (aka have any idea what it is) it. Instead, they want us to use the same code vault they set up in the 90s; which doesn't handle merging. We did start rolling out SCRUM (modified) a year ago, but that too took a pretty intense push as it was a deviation from pure waterfall and made process assurance nervous.

All in all, the slow process driven culture isn't a bad experience to have. Working in aerospace (and I'm sure DoD is similar) you gain a healthy respect for requirements driven code development. Unfortunately the refusal to change and significant paperwork can really ware on a person. It can literally take us a week to make a couple lines of code change since we have to have so many approvals. The benefit of this is it starts to teach you to do a better job validating your requirements so changes to code are minimized. The downside is you are staring at a deadline that requires 1 line of code change, and you have to somehow explain to program management why a 2 min code change will probably take 3 or 4 days to get through the process.

So I just got my offer, not the written one but told over the phone. Starting at $93000 so clearly upgraded to senior software engineer level instead of what the posting actually was for. I'll be getting the official written one by the end of the week.

I actually thought they were going to lowball me and they went way above what they thought. I was willing to leave my company for $82k so this is basically a no Brainer.

In this situation should I try to play ball and try to negotiate higher or accept what I have been offered? I've not been in a situation like this before... I assume it doesn't happen very often.

I mean the tech interview wasn't even a skill test it was just textbook stuff a dude straight out of college could answer. Accepting the job either way, just trying to figure out my next move.

That was my original thought too. What's the harm? I've just never been in a position where I said "I will move for X" and they basically said "how about for X+5500?"

Congrats. I tend to accept if its bit over what I wanted, closer to work than current correct?
Also, did they say how long your position will be contracted for? Assuming you might be part of X team under gov contract. Not sure how they handle their ppl when contract ends/canceled. Many just shift ppl around for their in-house. At locations you would just switch to the new company taking over.
Will also assume to might be at a location not in-house? Dont remember if you said it was at the company or offsite/location?

Dr Neir said:

Congrats. I tend to accept if its bit over what I wanted, closer to work than current correct?
Also, did they say how long your position will be contracted for? Assuming you might be part of X team under gov contract. Not sure how they handle their ppl when contract ends/canceled. Many just shift ppl around for their in-house. At locations you would just switch to the new company taking over.
Will also assume to might be at a location not in-house? Dont remember if you said it was at the company or offsite/location?

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Here's the best part. It cuts my commute by over 4 hours everyday. Yes. You read that right.

Also the train costs $6k/year so that is immediate savings right off the bat.

Its not a contracted position, it's full time salary. It's at raytheon and they shift people in house. I don't know what exactly I'll be working on or how that works but I did ask and they said they shift people.

Very nice. Ya, if you dont have to go into that re-complete world with the contract house the better. Its a pain when having to switch and getting medical and all that crap going again because good chance one company wont have the same medical as the other.

Company location is better than contract location, better availability on software.