Our previous CTO left by saying “I have enough money now. Peace out!”
We need more of those people, people who find contentment in their wealth instead of endlessly pursuing more wealth.
This isn’t a shit post, its the truth
You ever been around geese? Those terrible shits take shits everywhere, all the time. Loud, nasty birds.
Currently have 26 ducks and one goose on my farm so I get it.
You ever been around Microsoft management? It’s an improvement.
Wtf does a goose farmer even produce
Maybe they’re raising an army of nature’s angriest animal.
Maybe if enough programmers become goose farmers they’ll be able to reprogram geese.
Maybe if enough programmers become goose farmers they will stop these fucking constant imbecylic unnecessary updates.
Peak performance. I love them.
I feel like the progression of my “Programming shelf” says a lot about my career trajectory as well.
You read some Thoreau and immediately wanted to leave society behind lol, I see you took his lessons to heart.
The other pivot point is The Pragmatic Programmer, which is totally understandable.
That book does a good job of grounding the reader through examples and parables from everywhere else but IT. By the end, you realize that good software engineering makes the best of general problem-solving skills, rather than some magical skillset peculiar to computing. You wind up reaching a place where you can begin to solve nearly any problem through use of the same principles. So @codex here, perhaps effortlessly, went on to management instead.
What are those books on Doom and Wolfenstein? Is it the game development black book by sanglard? That’s the book I found with a bit of searching
Yes, those are the Game Engine Black Books (Doom|Wolfenstein) by Fabien Sanglard. Highly recommended for anyone interested in games, programming, and history. They are amazing time capsules of those games and the development environments that produced them. I think/hope he’s working on GEBB: Quake and I’m so excited for him to eventually release it!
I’m gonna have to snag that doom book. I love low level programming and I’ve heard a lot about how hacky game dev used to be and that just excites me
Oh you’re going to be in heaven, it’s one of my favorite books! He really gets into everything: how the game is structured, how different subsystems work (BSP trees, enemy ai, sound, music, every detail), and even gets into peripheral things like how the game was distributed, how the (old) console ports came about, and so much more. The copy on my shelf is actually my third because i keep giving them away to people.
Yeah… But right to left or left to right… Lol.
This looks uncannily like my shelf, I’m trying to buy land now for my permaculture forest 😭
Thanks for reminding me about Art of Shen Ku. Friend had a copy years and years ago and from time to time I would remember reading parts but could never remember the title. Cheers!
I’m a senior/principal engineer with 20+ years of experience and I can’t even think about retiring any time soon. All the posts in this thread are making me super sad. And the posted salary numbers are way higher than mine. :(
20 years of Microsoft stock options is a good pile of money
I’d way rather be a duck farmer. Geese are noisy little bastards.
and MEAN
Chicken is more profitable than ducks.
And more cuddly.
Yeah I was thinking farming geese has got to be complicated and awful work.
Entertaining for the neighbours though!
Ducks are the grossest birds. Anything is better than ducks. I have 6 ducks.
Wait I thought you had 7 geese.
18 chickens, 7 geese, 6 ducks, 11 cats, 3 fosters, two dogs.
Today I turn on one foster kitten, the rest leave next week. Not sure if they will give me more when I drop off the one today. But if they have something extra spicy I’ll probably get it.
Basically multiple types and the number is fluid. We’ve lost two chickens and two geese this year.
You got a whole menagerie! Sorry about your chicken and goose loss.
Yeah, after 22 years at Microsoft in a senior position, you should be able to retire and do whatever the fuck you want as a hobby. I very highly doubt this guy will ever make significant money from goose farming.
Are you saying his income will be … ahem … a goose-egg?
To have such a good career payout that you don’t need a career.
Might be one of the few times a Lemmy post related to me.
I have owned a farm for four years, and do engineering for fun. AMA
How did you get into owning a farm, and what led you to engineering?
My grandfather is/was an electrician for over 60 years. Worked on very important projects in New York City. This rubbed off on me growing up. I spent much of my childhood taking things apart, figuring out how they worked, and putting them back together how I liked. I’ve been working on both hardware and software since I was 11. Had the privilege to study CS formally in high school, and Computer Engineering in university.
Good timing mostly got me into farming, especially since interest rates fell to the floor during the pandemic. Had enough to buy the acreage I wanted, and the wife was interested in helping out. We grow a variety of things now, and not just plants. For example we sell Honey, Soaps, Walnuts, and Mushrooms. It can be hard on the body to be so active all the time, but it is more satisfying than a monitor staring back at you at 3am because of some small incident.
I continue to tinker, and assist startups in my spare time, I can’t imagine I will ever stop programming.
Honestly jealous
I quit my 20+ year career as a sysadmin about 2 years ago and started turning my backyard into a massive garden. I’m currently trying to figure out places to sell large quantities of hot peppers and I’m about to start selling matted and framed photos of flowers and wildlife from my garden.
Fuck IT.
Okay, thats the response for rich people. Whats the offer for less rich who would like to “disconnect from the system”?
start crying!:D
It’s a case by case thing, obviously there’s no single answer, it’s going to depend on your existing skills, your location, the availability of geese, and so on
i’m a data analyst. there’s an urge to say fuck this shit and start a brewery. That urge is there every single day.
I used to be a Toolmaker long ago and far away. And there is a, and not undeservedly so, stereotype of Toolmakers as cranky old assholes. And the job tends to make us intolerant assholes.
I too had reached a point where I had enough of being angry, cranky, and hateful to everyone and myself every day. So I finally took all that cranky angry hatred and decided to channel it into something more constructive - I became a Medic for the next 15 years. And when that pissed me off enough I decided to teach math in my tiny rural school for 4 years until I retired.
I am a very slow learner…
We always need more brewists. Do it !
I worked in IT for 20 years. I became a handyman and have 7 geese.
Are geese good animals to have?
Yes and no. They are much cleaner than ducks and they can be exclusively fed on grass once they are feathered out. This makes them unbelievably awesome in addition to their guard dog ability. In the springtime you get giant goose eggs. Which is a big perk. Since we got our first two geese we have not lost a single chicken or duck to hawks. Which is why we got them. We were losing 1 to 3 a year just to hawks.
The downside is that like all birds they poop everywhere And their poops are more undigested grass than runny stuff. And in the spring when you get those giant eggs the geese can become extremely aggressive. This means separating them from the other birds to prevent injuries and it means learning how to wrestle geese in a safe manner. And it means always being on guard. You will not be safe on your own property.
But for me the benefits far exceed risks. They pay for themselves. They give giant eggs, they stop hawks, they mow the yard, they require no feed.
There were a bunch of geese around my grandparents’ house when I was a kid. God those things would torment me. They had free range of the property and I tended to completely avoid the area they hung out because they were hyper aggressive and would chase after me every time I got anywhere near them. I was six years old, so it felt like they were as tall as me and they were definitely faster.
It wasn’t so bad once I got a little older, a little taller, and relied more on my bicycle than my feet for movement.
Nonetheless, those things gave me childhood trauma to the extent that I still can’t stand geese some forty five years later.
If they’re not tormenting you, they’re not doing their job. That’s their niche. They have one job.
Not safe ? what do you mean, a goose can hurt people ?
Only if they see you
Wait really, they represent a danger ?
Geese are legendary for their attack skills. They aren’t bad most of the year but in the spring they will mess you up if you get too close. You can go to YouTube and search for “goose attack.”
The Venn diagram overlap of senior+ programmers and farmers is oddly large
