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Other What currently makes your life awesome?

Discussion in 'General' started by Brooxy, 28 Oct 2009.

  1. GeorgeStorm

    GeorgeStorm Aggressive PC Builder

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    +1 @Byron C
    I always say I'm more interested in soft skills of those around me more than technical skills really since I think technical skills are both easier to learn, and more likely to change as tech changes. Also means I'm not that fussed when companies claim to be using the latest and greatest tech as a benefit, I'd far rather work on a 'boring' tech stack with people I get on with etc vs the latest and greatest with people who are all amazing technically but are awful to work with.
     
  2. Almightyrastus

    Almightyrastus On the jazz.

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    We went through exactly that when hiring our new engineer. The technical abilities of the final 3 were not under any question at all, they were all excellent. Nothing much of directly relatable expertise and experience (wouldn't have expected it given that we work in lightning protection and HV power earthing) so what it came down to was how well we thought we would be able to work with them.

    One guy was exceedingly clever, all sorts of electrical qualifications and would have picked up what we do easily. The problem was that he just came across as wanting everybody to know how qualified and clever he was. Kinda expected in an interview perhaps, but it just made him sound like an arrogant ar$ehole.

    The next was again great with his technical ability, just not good at all in communicating it. Not his fault, he was Nigerian with an EXTREMELY strong accent. OK, so we could have worked with that perhaps, he seemed like a decent guy, but not ideal when a part of our job is training people, a lot of whom do not have English as their first language.

    The last was an Indian girl who has the same bachelor's degree as me in electrical and electronic engineering along with a masters in nuclear engineering. She was all the nervous but still managed to put on a great presentation for us on lightning protection risk assessment and soil resistivity testing, things that she had no prior experience with. She was also good to chat to, and she has now been with us for 6 months and she's doing great.

    And now we need to go through it all again as one of our engineers has just left.... Yay, fun
     
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  3. bawjaws

    bawjaws Multimodder

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    As someone once said to me: it's easier to learn technical ability than attitude. Two interviews is our standard process: the first has a technical focus and the second is basically a check on personality & team fit (with an opportunity to take a deeper dive into any technical issues that might have arisen in the first interview, but that's pretty rare)
     
  4. Byron C

    Byron C I was told there would be cheesecake…?

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    Yeah, this is exactly what I mean.

    In most developer-ish roles like mine, the tech's changing all the time. But as a great man once said, there's no cure for being a [Scottish/Australian term of endearment usually considered highly offensive by everyone else]... :grin:
     
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  5. David

    David μoʍ ɼouმ qᴉq λon ƨbԍuq ϝʁλᴉuმ ϝo ʁԍɑq ϝμᴉƨ

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    Countryboy?
     
  6. The_Crapman

    The_Crapman World's worst stuntman. Lover of bit-tech

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    I think it's more a HR exercise. All candidates asked the same questions, answers recorded and scored, highest score "theoretically" gets the job. Particularly when there's internal candidates they can't then go on a rampage if they're unsuccessful.

    The feedback I got was that my answers were good, but lacked detail and cohesiveness. I think this was born from how the interview went, which was a little out of the ordinary. One of the interviewers was late, then when they turned up got asked if they'd finished a report for group, they hadn't and so left to go do a "10 minute job". Me and the finance manager just got chatting about general stuff, interests and hobbies, then kind of drifted into the interview when the task took the other person longer than initially thought. Because we'd just been talking casually and stuck a rapport I never really properly switched into interview mode with structured answers. There was a fair bit of waffling, long tangents about card fraud and something else. Was a bit scrappy so I don't take any offence from it, general feedback was good and the finance manager really liked me, just gotta properly nail it next week.
     
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  7. perplekks45

    perplekks45 LIKE AN ANIMAL!

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    And not a single one got my meandering post about the tangents mentioned by Crappy...

    Anyway, I always invite people mostly based on skills in their CV, then during the interview I test their character. They must be able to work in my team, not everybody will fit in or even want to. And that's perfectly fine. It's my job to make sure I hire the right people, not just the skills or pretty faces.
     
  8. The_Crapman

    The_Crapman World's worst stuntman. Lover of bit-tech

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    It's been a loooooong week :duh::sigh:
     
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  9. bawjaws

    bawjaws Multimodder

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    Nah, I got that bit thanks, I just disagreed with what came before it :D
     
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  10. DeadP1xels

    DeadP1xels Social distancing since 92

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    5 months post hair transplant and I’m sat here looking at my post operative photos. Honestly, I really can’t believe where I’m at with it mentally and physically.

    I was always told strictly 3 months minimum until you’d see noticeable grown, it came a lot sooner. At 3 months I got a text to say don’t worry if I’d not seen results it could take up to 6 months to become noticeable….

    i stayed in the UK for post operative care and medical regulation. It was expensive, but It was money well spent. I’ve genuinely never felt happier.

    If you’re considering it, do it. It’ll change your ****ing life.
     
  11. xaser04

    xaser04 Ba Ba Ba BANANA!

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    Testing out a new work laptop to replace my old Probook 450 G6 with a 4 core i5 8th Gen.

    Not a Vector 16 sadly but still a pretty beefy Crosshair 16HX from MSI which has some reasonable specs for its £899 price tag (at the time we bought it, since gone up).

    i7 14700HX, 16GB DDR5 5600MT/s, RTX 4060 (140w variant - completely pointless past 100w but "full power" nonetheless), 1TB Gen 4 NVME, 16" 2560x1600 240Hz Display. Decent I/O and, whilst plastic it feels pretty sturdy overall.

    Just did a bit of messing and with it set to its "Extreme Performance" profile and the fans set to auto (no where near max based on what they sound like at max...) it scored a decent 25,600 in CB R23. CPU seems to hit 150w briefly and then settle in at around 140w for sustained turbo load (4.1Ghz on the P Cores and 3.3Ghz on the E-cores).

    Not too shabby for the price point.

    Still uncertain if this makes sense for me or if the Stealth 14 is a better fit for my workflow (slower but still decent Ultra 7 155H as no AMD option... why MSI?!).
     
  12. perplekks45

    perplekks45 LIKE AN ANIMAL!

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    With that kind of power draw, does it burn through the battery even when plugged in?
     
  13. Vault-Tec

    Vault-Tec Green Plastic Watering Can

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    I have reconnected with an old friend.

    I had not seen him since about 1992. We were close friends in high school doing sleepovers at eachother's houses. Sadly whilst at a youth club one night someone stole something from him (a local do as you likey) and he thought it was me. Unfortunately there was nothing I could do, as I would have gotten my head kicked in had I done so. I never saw him again. A few years later when I had dug myself out of the crap situation I was in I knocked at his house but got no answer. He used to live with his mum..

    Any way, time went by. In 2001 I found him on Friends Reunited (well, he found me) and we shared a load of emails. Funny thing is we never went into what we were doing job wise. I might have mentioned IT, but he did not. I did think it was odd that his email was "Paul*****makeup" though. Obs removed his last name. So yeah, I just never connected the dots. The funny thing is I never expected him to make much of his life, as like me he hated school with a passion and left before it ended just like me.

    In 08 when I came home I reconnected with another old friend from school called Ash. We used to talk about school during our long chats, and would frequently bring up Paul. He was erm, overweight I think is the best way to describe it. He was funny AF though, so yeah he would constantly come up. Ash passed away last year (drank himself to the grave) which was very sad. So I kinda got thinking about our chats, and thought more about Paul. I said to Ash I would look him up again, so I did. I found him, didn't take long which surprised me.

    After quitting school he moved from his mum's house in with his father. I did not know this from him, I just saw him in an interview and connected the dots. I knew where his dad lived as I had been there on many occasions for sleep overs. Sadly 19 year old me never thought to go there doh.

    So yeah. Basically? Paul is now famous. Like, quite beyond that tbh he is a movie director and actually makes movies of his own. Horror movies. Hence why the "Paul****makeup". Again I was too thick to connect the dots.

    So he quit school, moved in with his father and then turned the house into a place to make his horror gear. Like masks, effects and etc. Crazy really. I mean, it is not very often that you grew up with someone who literally 100% achieved their dreams in life. Which makes me feel really good tbh.

    He does have a movie that has been released but if I know Paul it will be gory and scary AF. He was really into stuff like The Chainsaw Massacre and other very gory films. I prefer like, Halloween. IE being scared without all of the blood and guts.

    But aye. Crazy. Even crazier was where we grew up. It was a notorious s**thole known well for dragging people down and ruining their lives.
     
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  14. B1GBUD

    B1GBUD ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Accidentally Funny

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    Got my Bitcoin out of Nicehash, transferred to Coinbase and cashed it out!
     
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  15. fix-the-spade

    fix-the-spade Multimodder

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    Just finished setting up a second hand 55inch 4k TV. Now watching Youtube and looking at Bit-tech on it.

    HOLY **** HOW DID I LIVE WITHOUT ONE OF THESE!?
     
    Last edited: 21 Oct 2024
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  16. ElThomsono

    ElThomsono Multimodder

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    Ha, I started watching YouTube on the TV recently, for years it had just been on my phone. Couldn't believe how much more you can see, especially on brightly lit outdoors scenes like wot Mr.Hewes has in his tank repair channel.
     
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  17. Almightyrastus

    Almightyrastus On the jazz.

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    Finally managed to get some time booked off from work.

    Over the past year or so I have not been able to take much time off due to lack of staff. It started with one guy moving from technical to product management which left the remaining two of us to cover everything. This meant that I had to carry over 2 weeks from last year (we are only meant to carry over 1 week at most). Then we got a new engineer in who I had to train up (not a hardship, she has been awesome). Then our other engineer went off sick, and stayed off sick for 11 weeks, and then handed his notice in, yay more work for me and more difficulty in taking time off.

    So, we get to the situation now where I am sitting on 6 weeks of holiday still to take before April, and too much work with not enough cover... Then I bump into HR during a fire drill and the first thing she says is "YOU!! You need to take some holiday. You have a lot to take and we don't want another [engineer name] situation with you getting burned out, we will manage, you need a break".

    So now I have booked two weeks off, sadly not in one block, but week off, week in, week off, which I can deal with. And that still leaves me with 4 weeks (and a half day) still to book with no indication of when a replacement engineer will be popping up.

    But hey, at least I shall get a break.

    Oh, and I seem to have had a sneaky promotion. My job title has changed from R&D (I don't do R&D, but that is the structure) Project Engineer to R&D Senior Engineer. I'll take that.
     
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  18. adidan

    adidan Guesswork is still work

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    Car already fixed and only a couple of hundred quid rather than thousands.

    Top local mechanic, even ferried my OH too and from the garage.

    There have been a few pleasant surprises on my return to North of the border.

    I forgot, they don't let random companies run rampant and bleed you dry for water up here - it's all in the council tax. That was a nice surprise.
     
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  19. Byron C

    Byron C I was told there would be cheesecake…?

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    Had my new mattress just under a week and good god I haven’t slept this well in a long time…

    Our “old” one (which we’d only had for 6 months) was rated as “extra firm”, and it had no give whatsoever. I had a comical amount of pillows because my shoulder couldn’t sink into the mattress (I sleep on my side), and I’d wake up more or less every day with my shoulders and back in agony… Sometimes it’d be painful all day…

    This one is rated “medium” and the very first time I lay down on it I could instantly feel it “give” around my shoulder and hips… My spine is in a much more neutral position when I sleep now and it’s made a world of difference… No more aches and pains when I wake up, no more waking up in pain three times a night and having to turn over…

    I really did try for a long time to get on with our last mattress. I bought it before my other half came out of hospital because I wasn’t going to let her use the piece of crap we used to have right after she’d had spinal surgery… She got on with it just fine, and we didn’t really want to spend the money on a new one so soon…

    But god damn I should have done this months ago.
     
  20. xaser04

    xaser04 Ba Ba Ba BANANA!

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    Can sustain mid 50-60w on the CPU when the GPU is also fully loaded (up to 100w as anything beyond is pointless on a 4060 due to voltage limit).

    Doesn't appear to touch the battery in any meaningful sense when plugged in but also not done any deep testing on that side of things.

    I am actually handed it off to our Design Lead and switching to a Stealth 14. The latter is much better suited for my workflow and use case - again AMD CPU not being an option*).


    *Looks like for ~£200 more than the Stealth there is the Acer Nitro 14 with a 8845HS and it appears to have upgradable RAM as well.
     
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