Programming

Overrated:

Microservices (yes, it's me who created the recent thread about MSA). The thread has some insightful stories and arguments, but I still feel like the hype around microservices did the industry a bad favor.

MongoDB (closely related to the PG point below). I have several times heard my colleagues discuss MongoDB and want to use it at work. Every single time, my immediate reaction was to ask why and suggest using Postgres instead with its JSONB columns.

Clean/hexagonal architecture - I think that the underlying ideas (dependency inversion, single responsibility and the rest of SOLID) are great ways to reason about architecture. That said, the marketing hype about clean architecture seems to have created a cult of religious fans to the point where abstractions and layers of indirection are created just because that follows what Uncle Bob wrote in his article. Also, the popular argument of "now we can swap the database every day" is so unrealistic in my opinion. I don't really remember ever needing to unexpectedly swap a database. Maybe, I'm wrong.

Underrated:

Postgresql - even though it has a great reputation these days, I still think a lot of people would benefit a lot from knowing more about its features and potential. My personal favorite is using PG's FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED feature to implement a simple queue. Whenever I need a task queue, I immediately reach for it.

Presentation/writing skills: I am not a great presenter and speaker myself, but the more I work as a software engineer, the more I realize that being concise, accurate, and engaging in your writing/speaking is a valuable asset. Not only does it make you more efficient in communication, your colleagues like you more, and your managers are likely to give you a promotion.

What are yours?

Long story short, I've been trying to switch careers for a while (stock broker to data analytics), applied for a financial analyst job and now I have an interview in a few days that is behavioral and technical. I lied about having professional experience using Tableau and SQL. I'm scrambling trying to learn through tutorials. Does anyone who is experienced in SQL think it's possible to get through a technical interview this way?

Support request received. Oh I know exactly how the user can fix this. Provide a step by step solution, just two to three simple steps.

“That didn’t work. Please advise.”

“Ok no problem. I’ll meet you at your cube shortly.”

Show up and walk them through the steps. It resolves the issue. I don’t pry and ask if they followed my step by step but it seems obvious.

Context:

• I'm a Staff engineer at a well known tech company with a mature engineering org. 15 years in the industry. Well compensated, great product and team. Been there 3.5 years, was promoted once, and given lots of recognition and leadership.

• I am going to retire either in 2 months or 8 months to be a stay at home parent. For financial reasons, I'd prefer the 8 months. More vesting, bonus payout, and savings. But 2 months is fine too.

• My manager is excellent. Best of my career. And also a decent guy who I'm relatively close with.

• I'm the embodiment of the bus factor. I work on a critical team, am the only one with deep experience in the product and code, and it's a pretty niche bit of technology. I haven't preferred it be this way, but we've generally been understaffed and overworked on executive priorities since we were acquired. This is just to say, I know it'll be hard on the team when I leave, and they're going to try and get me to stay.

My question:

I'm considering letting my manager know that I'll be leaving in X weeks (still not for sure when I'll give notice), but that I'd be open to staying on for up to 8 months, under the condition that I work a lot less (say 10 hours/week) with the expectation that I'd help KTLO, stabilize the team and backfill my role.

But I won't stay for 8 months without a deal like that, for various family and personal reasons.

I can imagine many reasons the org wouldn't go for something like this. But I'm curious if you've heard of anything like it, and if so, if you have any tips for how I'd approach it.

EDIT: sorry for any confusion, accidentally replied from an alt account