d0paware

I'm curious about the trade-offs folks have preferred in their workplaces or teams over the years, and why they made sense at the time - i.e. you were single / underpaid / started a family / remote / autonomy / etc.

Over 8 years, at 4 different companies of various sizes...every place I've worked at had some grating issue(s), I've just learned which ones I'm willing to deal with.

A few for myself:

- I've come to accept that impactful teams often deal with ~50% interrupt-driven activities due to top-down mandates or fire-fighting. Real users, real value, real pain.

- Everyone pulls their own weight, but the annual raise isn't as high. Being the big fish in a small pond has diminishing returns - I might get a fat raise every year but the stress from being forever resigned to all the stuff nobody else can or wants to do is unsustainable.

- Team does not ask algorithmic puzzles (i.e. leetcode, epi) questions. I just don't have the energy to practice studying for them anymore, and hate asking them to people even more. However, I will say that doing so at one point in my career literally doubled my income, nevermind that the test taking skills I developed had no effect on my job performance. I probably left a lot of money on the table by not having tons of offers at once.

Hi all, a family member recently passed away and the NAS we had been using to backup their photos has been compromised by ransomware.

Of course if there is no other option, we would pay the substantial amount of money to get the photos back - but if we can pay significantly less to have someone reverse the encryption key, that would be preferred.

Does anyone know of a service that reliably does this in the bay area or in the states?

Thank you...