My So-Called Tech Life

Hi! I'm Robert; I'm a software engineer who's worked at a bunch of large companies (IBM, Apple, Google) and some startups and small companies (Berkeley Softworks, Intrinsa, Fungible). I've also been in academia and in research. This blog contains some stories from my career - the odd and interesting twists, personal interactions, frustrations, and little victories. Many of these stories are ones I've told to coworkers, my interns, and to graduate students or researchers to explain how software development actually gets done in industry.

When I was learning theater lighting in college, someone gave me the worst advice: “never tell the union stagehands that you’re new and don’t know something. They'll just mess with you mercilessly.” I took that to heart the first time I did lighting design for a play with real stagehands. I wanted to look like a professional, so when I was working with the crew to position and shape the light beams, I imitated my lighting design instructor. “That light: please cut it here [motion above my head for the place where the light beam should be cut off with the metal shutter in the light], here [left side cutoff], here [right side cutoff], and here [motion with my foot at the bottom limit of the light.] I moved over eight feet, repeated the pantomime for the next light, and repeated across the stage. On the night the show opened, I was up in the lighting booth with the stagehand who would run the lighting cues during the show. We were both looking at the closed curtain, lit up...