Male prostitute, your boss won't mind if you lay down on the job.

Yeah usually the boring ones. I'd work on an assembly line before I'd spend my day crawling under desks fishing out ethernet cables.

Agreed on the ram. When DDR4 hits the mainstream product lines that is going to be a nice bump.

We have "build" machines too. They get hijacked to run CI workloads. Typically 8-16 jobs running concurrently 24-7. They build -> then trigger smoke, other, security, migration etc testing.

Often we compile several times locally in the process of getting things working. Sadly highly coupled code between C# and tsql/db code. You need to migrate and build/run tests locally to have any hope of pushing something to a CI/build server that has a hope in hell of not breaking everything.

Anyways, I like having a high end local desktop, but then again I'm running webserver, db, and client workloads simulatanously on my local machine. 32GB ram, typically > 16GB in use at any given time. Without it we'd need to have dedicated dbs on servers we could migrate ourselves without any conflicts with any other users as we muck with stored procs and such.

These huge number of core server CPUs other than for big stuff like non-scale out db workloads and such are kind of silly. For the last 15 years at least they've been trying to sell us on the idea that everyone wants to go back to having thin clients with VMs hosted on fat dense servers. The only one that wants that are the accountants. Then if you take into account productivity it might be a wash. Especially since clock for clock server hardware is probably ~4X more expensive.

No it isn't tramatic just a waste of time. Especially when a couple people come over to your desk and want you to check something on another branch. Checkout, deploy database. Then build. Then when switching back need to build again. So 3 people sitting around waiting for a progress bar.

I've lived the HPC game too. In those days for me at least it was 5% dev and 95% reading/writing journal articles, books, either triggering or automating compute job configurations etc. Very little code but running for 200k+ cpu hours.

Sun back in the day, not sure if they still do it, used to offer servers with say half of the cores disabled. You could buy licenses and they'd turn on the extra cores without even needing a reboot. They offer different price points even if it means they waste some good cores disabling them to make an artificial performance different its still better for them than to have to make a different design/fab for each step in the process. The lifetime of a chip architecture/manufacturing process is so short that building n lines to make n products would be crazy expensive.

Exactly. Not that it would likely be worth it for my employer, even with salary accounted for, but my work project has 25 subprojects that need to be built but a max depth of 5 I think in the dependency graph. So could reduce my full builds from ~1min 5-10 times a day to say 10s 5-10 times a day. But usually I can multitask: do another once over the pending changes, etc. So the time isn't usually wasted anyways.

I agree with you for ultra light trade off. I guess maybe I'm not the target market but it seems like Apple for the last 5 years or so has pushed "thinnest X ever": I'm not really sure who's been asking for it. Weight I can see, battery life to some extent (basically has to last me between chances to plug it in, doesn't need to last 12hrs because other than a couple flights a year I'm never travelling non-stop for that long) but thinness makes no sense to me. "We dropped every useful port and replaced it with this one usb 3c port so we could shave 3mm off the laptop": thanks Apple.

I really hope this doesn't become the new standard. The Macbook and similar devices I think are suited for people with decent machines on either end of their commute (or hardly use a computer (Facebook dorks) at home). You use the thing while you are commuting and then "throw it away" for a real machine when you get there vs having a good laptop and then just docking the laptop to your ethernet/external monitors/keyboard etc on either end. IMO a good laptop with oddles of ports is a better deal over all unless you are the type to not do too much with a computer at home and not care on the other end because it is your employers hardware budget.

harddrive + charging: umm, all the time? Say a laptop sitting on my desk. All my media on an external drive. What do I just never charge the laptop so I can access my media?

USB is needed because a lot of laptops don't come with RJ45. Yeah you can go wifi, but my computer's right next to my router, why wouldn't I plug in to 1Gbps goodness (I don't have an ac router yet)?

Bought a new laptop a couple days ago: 3 USB ports on it, + a USB hub. My setup will be (at least when I'm at home): network, external monitor and external drive going though the hub via USB 3 (I'm getting a Dell XPS 15 with the USB 3.0 multi-dongle they suggest, hope it works well for video but if not only $60 and I'd want the ethernet dongle anyways). Another port will be tied up with my wifi mouse. That leaves one free for whatever gadget I'm playing with at the time (iPad/pod, kindle phone etc)

  I wish there were more of a selection at my local computer stores for bluetooth mice to free up the port. They usually have one and it is a tiny one meant for using your laptop on the go. I want a fullsized one but don't want to drop 50-100 on one online and have to pray it is comfortable when it arrives. I'm kind of going to be in the same boat as with my iMac: by the time I attach the things needed (mouse, keyboard, harddrive) I only have one port left that I constantly have to swap cables with (since my iPad, iPod and kindle/phone all use different connectors). I can't imagine the pain in the ass the new Macbook would be for me to use.

Yeah and it isn't just recruiting it is the whole industry. I'm constantly questioning. Are we using the right tools? If we are are they tools that are common enough that I'll be employable somewhere else? Then recruiting messages come in and they have a few languages or whatever I'm not using: should I spend time learning them just in case I decide to move? We have no stability in this industry. A surgeon that learns how to replace a knee can do the surgery the same way for a couple decades before being forced to do it a different way. Us every 6 months or so one of our languages/servers/OSs etc change and we need to re-evaluate everything again.

Yeah that really bugs me. Recruiter messages me with a job opportunity at a cool company. After reading for a page I realize it is an entire stack I have no experience with. I think it is reasonable to apply for a job where there are a couple things you need to learn as you go, but when it is completely different (ex. I do db/web services dev and I get one that is all javascript CSS, but hooks me because it is $120k a year to work at Google in the subject) ... very annoying. Heck I get recruiters offering me jobs in India. Why the hell would I want to outsource myself to India so I can earn $7/hr? My first years salary would be the plane ticket ;)

I agree it is one of those awkward but necessary parts of being in the job market. When working at one place I went on "vacation" to Fort Worth for an interview and then a few months later toGermany for another one. I wasn't open that it was an interview but when I came back with an offer and had my chat with my boss he pretty much said, "yeah I figured, it's a good opportunity you should take it". Anywhere that that isn't the type of response is not a place I want to work, and if they were jerks about it I'd have no sadness taking recruiting calls on my lunch break or whatever. I try to do the best job I can and leave things in a good state when I leave. In exchange I expect either more responsibilities as my skills improve or no problems moving somewhere else where I'd be of better use. I'm not willing to allow loyality stale my career at whatever round hole they happened to find to put me in.

We are professionals with goods to sell, namely our skills per hour. How silly it would be to allow one business owners feelings (your boss, who is trying to make a profit) prevent you from marketing your own businesses goods (for better pay, benefits, location, experience etc). Mah that is just my opinion your mileage might vary.

The problem is sites like LinkedIn and equivalent. You are there to be visible but recruiters use it to effectively spam you because they send messages through LinkedIn that ultimately land in your real email box because you don't want to use a fake one because you have networking you do want to use the site for.

You could try filtering out messages that look like recruiting spam from those sites but hard because their "you were endorsed by x", "congradulate Bob for his work anniversery" messages and the like are very canned and look "spammy" too. I read the subject of my emails then mark all read and call it a day. It is 30s of my day and every once and a while something jumps out.

I question how many people get offers from recruiters. Getting an email from a recruiter saying "we have this great position, pays $75k a year contact me if you are interested" != "We want you and are going to pay you $75k/yr contact us with details of where to deposit the check".

Must be willing to relocate, haha. I think for me it was relocate to San Diego actually. First word out of the phone interviewers month: "we don't cover relocation costs." I hadn't asked, we hadn't discussed the particulars of the job/my skills etc. Literally, "Hello, thanks for making the time. We don't cover relocation costs. Are you still interested?"

How the hell would I know if I'm interested I have no idea about the company or the particulars of what exactly you need me to do. Talk about bad at sales. "Our product has the crappiest guarantee in the industry, still interested?" Years of experience for a new technology is classic. I think recruiters are very bad at getting the details of positions correct. The client says "mid level position for someone with Swift experience" and they translate it into a posting/interview question "do you have 5-10 years experience with Swift?".