bitshepherd

12 ms·

61.
by bitshepherd 11y ago
OS X isn't a huge cultural shock. It's mostly getting your head wrapped around the dock and some hotkeys, and it mostly Just Works. I made the switch a couple years back after over a decade of hardcore Linux or BSD on the desktop.
62.
by bitshepherd 11y ago
Referral... bonus? These are things? Seriously, though. Every referral I've made in my career has flaked out at some point. It doesn't matter if it's a person I've known for years, or someone I recently met at a meetup o
63.
by bitshepherd 11y ago
Got let go after showing up late to mandatory retraining (I found out the day of, and we didn't have smartphones then), which resulted in moving to another company across town for a contract where conversion was a "sure thing&quot
64.
by bitshepherd 11y ago
I'll bring it from the other angle. I know why I wasn't hired (though I wasn't told): - No formal background - I don't code on the spot, and not on a whiteboard with zero resources but rote memory - I'm not "se
65.
by bitshepherd 11y ago
If you need to take time, do. If you don't need to, don't. That's the most I can say on that matter. I didn't go to school in the traditional sense, so whatever makes sense for you makes sense. What made the year off sor
66.
by bitshepherd 11y ago
I have taken a year off. It was great the first six months, then life caught up and it was just a race to get back to cashflow positive. The last six months undid everything good the first six did.
67.
by bitshepherd 11y ago
Some companies will set up their own internal MPLS network, and it starts making sense when you grow to a certain size.
68.
by bitshepherd 11y ago
As a buddy of mine said to me "you don't keep up, you find 1 or 2 things to follow and stick with it".
69.
by bitshepherd 11y ago
I "pursued my passion" for a while, but the comfort of having a full-time job with a relatively fixed schedule for getting paid was too much at the time, so I started chasing the dollar. To the point where I moved to SV to enter t
70.
by bitshepherd 11y ago
It's also good to think /why/ Marcus wrote the things he did, why they meant so much to him that he felt it necessary to do so.
71.
by bitshepherd 11y ago
I can design, architect and build scalable, performant and maintainable systems. I've been doing so for over 15 years. In a professional setting, I might be "the guy" you go to with the problems nobody else can solve. Put me
72.
by bitshepherd 12y ago
You could use a configuration management framework like Chef. Granted, it takes a bit longer to put in place as opposed to a just-get-it-done method, but the end result is something that is repeatable and, hopefully, less painful to triage.
73.
by bitshepherd 12y ago
As a reformed sysadmin, I suggest giving devops a closer look. It's less of the handwavy voodoo buzzword it was a few years ago and has taken root in many orgs as a means to enact real change on the status quo, not only technologically
74.
by bitshepherd 12y ago
Nothing is the antithesis of something. The one constant there is, is nothing. Nothing isn't what you can see, but what you cannot. What is becomes nothing. Everything is nothing.
75.
by bitshepherd 12y ago
You should be shocked they're not longer. Source: engineer that used to dabble in adtech
76.
by bitshepherd 12y ago
6 days a week at, on average, 8 hours a day is just not sustainable. You'd have to scale that back to about 6 hours a day, and that's still pushing it because you're not giving yourself enough time to unwind and work on you a
77.
by bitshepherd 12y ago
This was the only way to start manual transmission vehicles when I was growing up, not out of necessity but because it could be done. Living at the top of a hill, I'd let the car start rolling and pop the clutch once I got going. Worke
78.
by bitshepherd 12y ago
If you want to get your feet wet, spin up a virtual machine with something you want to get to know, and do stuff with it. Build things manually and learn how they all fit together, then try to repeat the process with automation. Through tha
79.
by bitshepherd 12y ago
Nobody cares how long you went to college, where you went to college (okay, some people DO care about that), or even what your GPA was when you graduated. Here's what employers do care about in my experience: if you went to school, did
80.
by bitshepherd 12y ago
The messaging protocols that are still here from the older days of the Internet are not going anywhere. Email is here to stay. IRC is still going strong. Hell, even Usenet is still kicking. Ignore the FUD.
81.
by bitshepherd 12y ago
You've done your part. It's in their hands now. Whether or not you'll be contacted remains to be seen, but for now assume that it's in a black hole. If you get a response, cool, awesome. Cross that bridge when you come t
82.
by bitshepherd 12y ago
You can take delivery yourself, or you can contract it out to another company like Redapt or one of the other systems integrators. Authorize them to act on your behalf with the data center and tell them what you want to be done. I've u
83.
by bitshepherd 12y ago
As a mid-career professional, this strikes me as the kind of thing that might have appealed to me when I was 19-23, but even then I hung out with 40 somethings. Perhaps I'm just not the target audience. Cool idea, nonetheless.
84.
by bitshepherd 12y ago
I'll let you in on a little secret. I've worked at 5 different companies over the past 2 years. On my resume, you'll see 2. Why do I do this? Those companies I was at for a month on short-term projects don't add any intr
85.
by bitshepherd 12y ago
I used to get crippling anxiety interviewing remotely. My trick was to pour a double of something (usually whiskey) and drink on that. Of course, you can't do that before an in-person, but it helped me overcome the anxiety of interview
86.
by bitshepherd 12y ago
Focus on the message, not when it gets there. Sure, you want to submit before the deadline, but even if it's zero hour, as long as it gets in.
87.
by bitshepherd 12y ago
I find it difficult to remember the jargon and idioms, and this day in age when one might switch between a few different languages just to solve one problem, it just gets more difficult. I don't have a degree. Hell, I barely completed
88.
by bitshepherd 12y ago
Just one thing? The whole process of the job search is tedious, painful and just downright frustrating, and employers make it harder and harder because reasons. Not to mention the whole dog and pony show that the candidate has to go through
89.
by bitshepherd 12y ago
Do the interview but don't invest yourself emotionally. Approach the interview like you don't want the job (even if you do). If they like you, cool. If not, cool. One thing you can try is contracting/consulting with an establ
90.
by bitshepherd 12y ago
After over a decade of fiddling, twiddling, tweaking, breaking, fixing and generally trying to use Linux on a desktop, I gave up and went the opposite direction, and I couldn't be happier. I no longer actively fight my package manager

More ›