• 10 Posts
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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: January 24th, 2024

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  • Not really. Mostly online there’s some bloodthirst that can be disappointing, but I know how this works so I get it, it’s not the worst thing happening right now.

    I think casual counterproductive xenophobia with e.g. Linux kernel banning russian maintainers supposedly as opposed to people explicitly involved with the war or gov’t is also disappointing.

    Back before the war, a lot of my western friends in the UK were either Putin apologists, whenever I’d bring up my persecution as a trans person in Russia, they’d laught if off or say something like “I just like Putin, he’s so funny”. It’s been enjoyable watching them be silent now. It’s been less enjoyable to see them follow Farage and Trump and similar paternalistic populist “charismatic” leaders though.

    No quantity of “I told you so” will ever get through to them, a lot of westerners are too close minded and westcentric and they don’t always have the capacity to have discussions about geopolitics that don’t necessarily relate directly to them.

    At the outset of the war, literally on day 1 iirc, I was dating somebody from Ukraine, and we had a lot more common ground and ability to discuss geopolitics, probably helps both of us were really engaged leftists at the time.


  • Need? None of course. MSc I did was a waste of time pretty much. But I needed to stay in the country for the visa so I did it anyway.

    Before I got an MSc I got absolutely zero offers for:

    Junior Software Engineer/Developer (Full stack, backend & frontend; React, Python, NodeJS, C#, Java) Junior Network Engineer Junior Site Reliability Engineer Junior DevOps Engineer Junior UI/UX Analyst Junior IT Technician Junior IT Support Engineer Junior IT Support Analyst Junior Machine Learning Trainee Junior Data Analytics Engineer Junior Infrastructure Analyst (Cloud and DC) Junior Cybersecurity Analyst Junior Security Engineer

    I eventually applied for a Java (Node) Developer and turns out they needed a Junior Security Engineer so I got through the interview and did that. About a year later got promoted to mid-level, fully remote. Never looked back.

    In the end in my entire life I’ve applied to hundreds of positions, most with custom written cover letters, I got a grand total of 4 interviews, 1 lead to a technical test I did my best on then failed anyway, 1 led to a technical test that I then succeeded at, 2 others led to offers, one of which was my work placement/internship as an “Junior informatics trainee” during uni as part of their program (cost £5000) and paid minimum wage and it was the worst soul-sucking job I ever had.


  • It matters more and less than it probably oughta depending on the specifics.

    I wouldn’t have been able to get into Cybersec MSc (and later job) with a Gamedev BSc, yet all the gamedevs were way more hardcore as programmers and software engineers with a much more thorough understanding of computers just by the virtue that they learned C++ and Python and not Java/C#, meanwhile someone with a Business Information Systems degree can easily pivot into a cybersec MSc yet know absolutely nothing about how computers work as that is primarily a marketing/media degree with light IT.
















  • Fast food good for people with not enough time or energy to make meals, if you were having such a rough life as to use what I presume is a dollar store of some sort, then surely you get that? And the fact it’s gotten more expensive, being the symbol of the economic strength of the post-90s Pax Americana world order, it’s upsetting to see it get so expensive, as a reminder that this world order is long gone and we’re firmly in times of economic hardship and sweeping populism across the west now.