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

Yeah, I thought about pushing back at first. I didnt realize until a week in what a shit show this was.

I have about 10 clients I work with day to day, and this is by far the biggest. It makes up about 20 percent of our net sales. So I didnt mind trying to play the company guy and come in and get shit done. Working from home is not ideal for me, I have an 8 month old and a Teacher wife who has been home all summer driving me crazy. SO I was happy to get back into the daily work grind.

I guess I dont mind the reassignment logistically. But damn, when I found out what a shit sandwich this place was it was a major turn off. It was easier waiting on the bureaucracy when I wasnt on site.

I feel like the reason the Project manager requested me to come in, is that normally I split my 40 between this client and all the others...but alot of the work I do for other clients are covered under a service plan or we bill T and M. But here I bill hours against a project, and my hourly fee on this is much higher. I think they scoped out hours on the job way more than was needed, and this is their way of forcing the billed hours. If I was remote I would only ding them for the 10-20 of work I do, but if Im here I can ding them for 40. My guess is the coordinator for the client noticed we scoped them for X hours and werent even nearly on pace for that.

So in the end, in the attempt to raise sales numbers and make it look like we are doing more than we are, I get to come into the office.

Feel so dirty. The one draw back to Managed services and consulting is that you really need to hustle to get that extra shady buck.

Pcie enumeration is great really. Modern intel architecture allows up to 256 busses and a bunch of devices and functions - a lot of devices and up to 8 functions. Bios is pretty smart now and besides a few hard-coded addresses we dynamically assign addresses to devices. I think the pci bus specs leave a lot of headroom and we won't really see a change for a long time with how many devices it supports.

I was mostly joking, everyone pretty much loves pcie architecture and enumeration.

Noodleface said:

I was mostly joking, everyone pretty much loves pcie architecture and enumeration.

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I know I fucking do. Like, what the fuck did we do before pcie enumeration!?

Thats actually really fucking cool

It gets even crazier when you try to cram 12 I/O cards that require x8 or x16 lanes on a 2 processor server. You have to use PLX switches (pcie switch) to route the traffic in real time because that's way too many lanes for the cpus. The programming behind using those switches is fucking awful too, it uses the most obscure set of registers and values based on so many different things. Most difficult thing I've done to this day was setting up memory mapped io and bus numbering on a server with 2 cpus and 12 slots that also had to support pcie lane bifurcation on certain cards (x4x4 instead of x8) . It's a mouthful.

And here I am complaining the fact that log4j takes up over thousand methods...

Well, BIOS is really low level stuff - I mean, with the introduction of EFI by Intel it really changed the landscape. It went from strictly assembly in 16-bit mode to a full 32/64-bit mode with C programming. Some of the stuff is super complicated by design to obfuscate purposefully, others are just needlessly complicated.

Although I do have a passion for it, my brain is tired from it and I'm glad to be changing fields.

Every style of programming comes with it's own set of headaches. But it is fun to at least switch things up. Maybe you'll end up far preferring your new headaches to your old headaches.

Tenks said:

Every style of programming comes with it's own set of headaches. But it is fun to at least switch things up. Maybe you'll end up far preferring your new headaches to your old headaches.

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Yeah who knows, I'm sure your job has some weird headaches you can't tell us about even though I saw you on WoW in the middle of the day yesterday and you were probably getting paid for it

I was working from home man give me a break

edit: he's also in my guild

Noodleface said:

Yeah who knows, I'm sure your job has some weird headaches you can't tell us about even though I saw you on WoW in the middle of the day yesterday and you were probably getting paid for it

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Its actually kind of odd going from a struggling not-for-profit company to going to a for-profit which is doing exceedingly well. Yes we are encouraged to boot up and play Blizzard games every so often. They do stress that do not let this impact work and if it does it is a privilege which can be revoked. In fact today is a company wide "Play Legion all day" event to celebrate the launch.

But just a few things off the top of my head of hidden perks and benefits since I started. Every month is birthday month and the bar is filled with cakes. Every other Friday is bagel day. Every third Friday is a half day where the team does some activity (generally play video games and hang out in the bar -- last time it was go karts though.) My old job we'd never be allowed for team lunches. Here I've already had two. The company shuts down the week of Christmas (though admittedly the PTO allowance seems to compensate for this.) There is a once-a-year beach day (next Friday actually) where the company takes shuttles to the beach (Dana Point this year) to just hang out and have a BBQ. For every launch we receive 1 digital CE key, 1 boxed standard edition, 1 boxed collectors edition. There is an end-of-the-year party in December -- this year is Vegas. And there is also profit share/performance bonus which is foreign to me as well. From what I understand since OW exceeded forecasts the last payout was pretty good for most people.

But also I'm going to intentionally be fairly quiet about work. Yes I do already know a ton of confidential stuff and things in the pipeline. Since you aren't encouraged to talk to anyone (including spouse) except co-workers it felt like people were pretty eager to spill the beans shortly after I started. They also seem oddly secretive about their tech stack and internal project names even on my team -- I'm guessing to avoid people typing in <project>.battle.net and getting somewhere real. I'd also like to keep it fairly poorly known outside of this thread about my employer.

Im on my way to Irvine, I need a new job

Cad said:

How is living in the OC?

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Its good. The weather is pretty great in that it is cool in the morning/evening and warm in the daytime. Though from what I understand it has been pretty abnormally hot the past few weeks where the highs are 85+. The breeze feels like AC is constantly blowing on you, though. I also love how (and this may be Irvine specific) how everything is pretty close by. If I need to buy a shirt the Spectrum is down the road. If I need something to eat there is a resturaunt within a stones throw everywhere you are. The people congestion is the biggest bummer. There are people everywhere. Going to Target at the Spectrum was quite the chore. Going to Ikea at Costa Mesa was leading me down a path of murder-suicide. The highway going into Irvine is pretty much bumper to bumper every morning. Luckily my apartment hooks up with a bike trail that goes directly to work so I don't have to worry about that. I was originally going to think about looking to live in Mission/Aliso/Costa Mesa but anymore I think I'd prefer to live in Irvine proper just to avoid the daily traffic.

Also we're finally going to the beach this weekend. I think we're going to hit up Laguna.

My wife (and mom) won't let me buy a motorcycle Something about a "dangerous personality." Its bullshit.

Glad you like the job man, that sounds like a great place to work and live.

I'd never leave with those benefits, although I don't know how the pay compares for cost of living there.