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|                                                                              |
|  Dhananjaya D R                   @/logs   @/software   @/resume   @/contact |
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What is it like to be a techie?
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[1] Some companies project an image of an engineering paradise, where their
    technologies are awesome, the staff are stunning, and the keyboards are
    made of gold. But after joining, you discover that the technologies are
    crummy, the staff can be terrible, and your right shift key is sticky.
    It's a company where dumb stuff happens but nobody can fix it, and the
    future outlook is dull. The paradise was a facade. You won't really know
    what a company is like until you've taken the risk, already left your job,
    made the transition, and been working there for a while.

[2] Once I built high-quality software which was labeled as critical for
    utilities. We had only one unscheduled outage in 3 years. Each outage was
    under 20 minutes. I regret doing that—the client didn't care or understand.
    Most other potential clients went for lower-quality systems as they spent
    the extra money on salesmen rather than quality developers.

[3] If anyone tells you a task will be easy, especially if they are not doing
    the work themselves—more so if they have never done it themselves.

[4] Imposter syndrome is real! Sometimes you'll encounter problems that seem
    impossible and will take much longer than you'd expect to solve. If you let
    it, it will break your confidence for a while. Then you'll finally figure
    it out and feel amazing. It can be a self-confidence rollercoaster.

    In other words, my confidence in my abilities changes day by day. One day I
    feel like I'm the best, and the next I don't know anything. It's a constant
    grind to learn new technologies and processes. I feel brain dead half the 
    time—it's just a never-ending info dump.

[5] Your time will be better spent drinking with your colleagues than putting
    in a few extra hours of work to knock out a feature.

[6] Productivity does not have a definition, and chasing it is the fast lane to
    burnout.

[7] You probably won't be doing anything overly interesting.

...and 100 others.

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