Black Mesa is beautifully done but combat is not as well balanced as the original game; there are odd spikes in difficulty at certain points that will have you cursing.
Players new to the series would be better served by playing the original Half-Life than Black Mesa.
> older devs had to go into management to keep their career trajectory ... FAANG companies seem to have figured it out for people they've already hired.
The FAANG companies and other technology platform companies have separate technical and management career tracks. Only those who want to be managers become managers.
In theory, yes. In practice, no. At a certain point, a lot of engineers plateau in terms of technical ability and are unable to continue to level up. For many, they feel compelled to switch tracks to management to continue to make progress, regardless of whether they have any innate ability or desire to excel at management.
or they fall for the money-making scam, where their new car payment is now the same amount as their rent originally was when they began their careers. Buying larger houses, etc. Basically always barely acclimating to their new level of wealth, so that they always try to climb up the next rung.
I recently quit a job that was advertised as a developer but turned into 90% paperwork. Lasted over a year (it was contractor anyway). But in hindsight, basically NO amount of money would make me happy or willing to fill out forms all day. Seriously, even another $100k wouldn't make me feel any better, I'd still be miserable and not doing what I love.
>...they feel compelled to switch tracks to management to continue to make progress, regardless of whether they have any innate ability or desire to excel at management.
Can confirm: Once you "plateau" in a division, the only options are lateralling to a technology you don't know (with the same expectations exacted upon you) or simply going management and that assumes that there's room in management.
Given how frequently "organisational shifts/changes" occur, that could leave you out in the cold, just as well.
My company does explicitly say that certain levels, roughly equivalent to a staff engineer at most companies, will likely be a career level (as in, you will never advance beyond it) for many people that level still pays very well - easily in the 200-300 TC range maybe more. As long as companies are okay with developers being at this level for a long time - perhaps even decades - I'm fine with it. The only thing that would bother me is an "up or out" kind of culture, that prioritizes "velocity". Fortunately I think more and more companies are getting comfortable with developers that they no will never progress beyond a senior developer role.
Vacuum tubes (thermionic valves) work by heating a tungsten filament-- the cathode-- until the filament is hot enough to emit electrons, which are then attracted to the positively-charged plate (anode), traveling through the vacuum (and thus flowing current). Current only flows in one direction in this setup, which has two electrodes, leading to the moniker "diode." Adding a third electrode in between the cathode and anode-- called the "grid" based on its physical shape-- allowed a vacuum tube (now a 'triode') to use a small signal to control a large one. An amplifier!
The key to the function is the heating of the cathode filament. Vacuum tube designs that use a separate heating current (which is, today, most of them) do not conduct if the heating current is not applied. "Cold cathode" type tubes are not vacuum tubes-- they are typically filled with a low-pressure gas.
An insulator by definition is matter that doesn't have freely flowing electrons so vacuums aren't an insulator. However, all insulators have a "breakdown voltage" at which point the electrons start "ripping" through the material so a vacuum has all of the properties of an insulator except the mass: the breakdown voltage is the the amount of energy required to eject electrons from the materials surrounding the vacuum and until you reach that point, no current will flow through the vacuum.
The ACM is an academic association. The IEEE should be more important professionally than it is; one problem with the IEEE is that you have to have a related bachelors degree to join.
Developers should start a new organization that represents the interests of employees of the technology industry.
