#Junior Software Engineer

[ottopilot-sfw]

Vibe coding something. This shit is supposed to take my job? All y'all are fucked. We are all fucked.

[librarianofdreams]

oh god. and if I may ask, how did you then manage to become.. well, not a software engineer?

have i told you guys i used to be a software engineer. because i used to be a software engineer.

[bigbandithewada]

Feeling like putting down my find so here is

JV/Ant Davidson Timeline

(Can’t guarantee 100% accuracy on all info, can’t guarantee no bias no projection, not using there full names because guess what, so less info about them together if you google their names together my blog appears on the 1st page)

JV was raised in Switzerland. Did math and computer science in Switzerland. He found out he needed an engineer background to enter F1 so went back to England to get a master in that. Got to work at BAR(later Honda, Brawn, Merc) eventually. (He had a billion interview on him hustling his way to BAR but that’s not relevant to the story here)

Ant was raised in a middle class family. Went to Karting with brother and he was more interested and started to compete in Karting. He worked his way to Formula Ford and was lucky to get a sponsorship( the sponsor bought a house and let him lived there). His sponsor talked to him about career choice, at that time, test driver made a decent amount of money and that f1 seat seems a bit too distant. So Ant ended up in BAR around the same time as JV

Well JV was not that much of an engineering guy. His job going into Honda was a combination of some data analysis, coordination between departments and some engineer. There was no proper strategist job back in the days so he just bounced around. (The untold interview he said he was suppose to fix an electronic problem on the front wing, Evan Short ended up doing that. Not saying that he knew nothing but inferring from his other interview, he definitely needed help). (Even now strategist have “low” status in the team since only the principal strategist can go to the track and everyone back home’s job is make sure to feed enough info through TR that the principal’s eyes are always on track).

Meanwhile, Ant was doing amazing as a test driver, too amazing that Honda was reluctant to release him to do actual f1 racing. He missed a seat(which team I forgot) but Honda eventually agreed to let him race for Super Aguri in 2007. That team didn’t last.

Then came the Brawn year. Before 2009, JV and Ant were already starting to worry about their jobs and registered a company together. Company never took off because here comes Brawn GP.

After the championship, our champ Jenson was scheduled to do victory laps in the factory for the fans but he already buggered off to McLaren. Ant did the laps and JV was his engineer for that.

Then came the Merc years.

Ant was doing a bunch of different things then: racing in WEC, driving the Merc simulator and later became a sky sport host. Ant missed the chance of winning a championship(he also missed a podium due to bad luck in 2007) but he got one eventually. When Alonso returned to F1, Ant interviewed him asking if Alonso remembered them racing against each other in WEC, Alonso did not remember. Ant also did Jenson’s retirement interview. Ant also did some interview later saying he was too nice to be competing in this shark tank of f1, nice guy can’t win races.

JV was doing a bunch of different things in Merc as well. He was in charge of simulator, junior team, esport team and development data analysis software for premier league(honorable mention: he wrote the drivers code of conduct in 2016 to prevent Lewis and Nico fighting). Ant was a reliable simulator driver, JV was working a lot with Ant at that time(JV didn’t need to be present for the crowd strike thing but he was there…) (Also they Merc’s equipment to tune cars for their friend’s Karting league, naughty boys). I want to believe JV cares about drivers he works with, especially junior team (he went up to hug Esteban Ocon(Merc junior driver) after his 2021 Hungarian gp win(Merc strategy was a disaster that race)

Ant said JV is one of his best friends. He phoned JV a lot during the Honda and Brawn years. Ant also texted JV to ask for technical details when he started to comment for Sky( Ant joked in 2023 pre season test that JV is getting to busy with his TP job to reply to his texts). JV also bugged Ant for a VIP pass during Ant’s LeMans years. JV had spent time with Ant’s family doing barbecue for JV’s birthday. JV is Ant’s kids’ god father.

Projection time: Brawn and Merc years treated JV so well he probably is a bit idealist about things now. The stuff he said at Williams make sense if your work experience is a streak of championships. JV will probably never get a reality check so hard the way Ant exit F1(divorce? Idw). Knowing they are good friends make me happy.

(Some source from Ant’s deleted twitter account)

[i-prefer-base-twelve]

Listening to the New York Times podcast Hard Fork, and just now where they were talking about "AI snobs." "If someone says they don't use AI, they're probably lying."

Ive been frustrated with this podcast for awhile now, but episode this made me unsubscribe. I'm gonna yell about it for a sec.

They are fine with junior engineers checking in AI solutions. This tells me they haven't worked on a single software project a day in their life (true, they are journalists). It is very important that a junior learns how to think through problems!! It is very important that everyone involved understands the code!!! Copy-paste code is likely to have non-obvious bugs and is often difficult to modify. Writing code that's easy to modify is one of the most important skills software engineers can acquire. I could go on.

They made the assertion that AI can come up with better ideas and write better prose than they could on their own. If that's true? Respectfully, then change careers to something that doesn't require creativity. Its prose is vapid and its ideas are boring, and if you can't do better than it, you're just not very good at writing! I'm sorry. There are classes you can take to improve if this is the case.

Finally, back to "if you say you don't use AI you're lying." Bro, I gave it a good faith effort, since y'all wouldn't shut up about it. I got a Copilot license at work. I've tried brainstorming creative ideas with it. And in every. single. case, it's been inferior to asking other humans.

And all this doesn't even touch on the IP theft or environmental concerns.

tldr: Fuck AI and fuck AI boosters.

PS: Hard Fork sucks, listen to Better Offline instead

[queenlua]

lmao (from this CTF writeup):

The final step, emitting the target language, which is nowadays often NOT C, is our greatest weakness in 2024. A new generation of engineers and systems folk have discovered the fruits of Chris Lattner's labor and staked their claim on today's software landscape. Unfortunately for reverse engineers, we continue to deal with the Cambrian explosion in binary diversity without commensurate improvements in tools. We eat shit reading worsening pseudo-C approximations of things that are not C. This problem will probably not get solved in the near future. There is no market for a high-quality Rust decompiler. First, no one writes exploits or malware in languages like Rust or Haskell. Unlike C/C++/Obj-C, the Rust/Haskell/etc ecosystems are predominantly open-source further decreasing the need for reverse engineering. Lastly, improved source control and ready availability of managed enterprise services (i.e. GitHub) make first-party loss of source code much rarer nowadays. So like, no one really cares about decompiling Rust other than unfortunate CTF players. Golang is a notable exception. Golang is like, the language for writing malware--great standard library, good cross-platform support, brain-dead easy concurrency, easy cross-compilation, fully static linking, and design with junior programmers in mind. You could shit out a Golang SSH worm in like 200 LoC crushing carts and ketamine no problem. People worry about AGI Skynet hacking the Pentagon to trigger a nuclear holocaust but really it's more gonna be like eastern European dudes rippin' it with some hella gang weed ChatGPT ransomware. So maybe we'll get a good Golang decompiler first?

[kangshxrtie]

xinyn + friends

yn yln . wxynz . thoughtsandprayers

currently a junior in college . not popular but known . dating nakyoung . used to be friends with xinyu .

zhou xinyu . xixyu . goddessx

currently a junior in college . contemporary theater major . most popular girl on campus . dating sohyun .

yamada kaede . kaenosuke . kaepyon

currently a sophomore in college . software engineer major . friends with yn .

kwak yeonji . keonji . chococooke

currently a freshman in college . digital media arts . friends with yn .

hsu nien tzu . tzumei . hsuzu

currently a junior in college . international relations major . friends with yn .

yoon seoyeon . s1yeon . root

currently a junior in college . communications major . friends with xinyu . dating yooyeon

lee jiwoo . leejyuu . eraser .

currently a sophomore in college . peforming arts major . friends with xinyu .

seo dahyun . seoda . poisonpaengwang .

currently a junior in college . vocal music major . friends with xinyu .

[hasufin]

Deus ex Machina

I used to work at a hospital system in which no one knew how to configure users on our main charting software.

I'm serious. The tool was so old, everyone who actually understood it had retired or died. It booted off an 8" floppy drive.

So how did they set up users? Well... they did know how to copy an existing user and then rename the copy. So you found another user with the accesses your new user needed and made a copy. I wish I was kidding.

This kinda led me to a newer concept and maybe a plot idea. Setting up permissions in a system is tedious. And the more granular it is (which is what infosec folks say you need) the more tedious it is. The goal is for any given person to have exactly the accesses they need and nothing at all which they don't need. But that takes a lot of work.

And what do people do nowadays when something is tedious?

That's right! They throw AI at it!

Now imagine a corporate dystopia: your citizenship is less important than your employment, you just got made an employee of TargWalAmCo, Corporate Engineer, Junior Grade. The TWAC AI will set you up. It never makes a mistake.

It looks at your name, and decides for reasons no human will ever understand, that your name and face must be that of a Chief Executive. You log in... and you're the CEO. I mean, there's an actual CEO, but you have the same accesses as they do. In fact, they just got kicked out of the system, because the TWAC AI likes you better. And it's very aggressive about enforcing this.

And it can't be undone, because you'd have to rebuild the TWAC AI from scratch, which would functionally be the same as obliterating TWAC, which not only would be a Bad Thing, but the TWAC AI won't allow it.

[marta-bee]

News of the Day 6/11/25: AI

Paywall free.

More seriously, from the NY Times:

"For Some Recent Graduates, the A.I. Job Apocalypse May Already Be Here" (Paywall Free)

You can see hints of this in the economic data. Unemployment for recent college graduates has jumped to an unusually high 5.8 percent in recent months, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently warned that the employment situation for these workers had “deteriorated noticeably.” Oxford Economics, a research firm that studies labor markets, found that unemployment for recent graduates was heavily concentrated in technical fields like finance and computer science, where A.I. has made faster gains. [...] Using A.I. to automate white-collar jobs has been a dream among executives for years. (I heard them fantasizing about it in Davos back in 2019.) But until recently, the technology simply wasn’t good enough. You could use A.I. to automate some routine back-office tasks — and many companies did — but when it came to the more complex and technical parts of many jobs, A.I. couldn’t hold a candle to humans. That is starting to change, especially in fields, such as software engineering, where there are clear markers of success and failure. (Such as: Does the code work or not?) In these fields, A.I. systems can be trained using a trial-and-error process known as reinforcement learning to perform complex sequences of actions on their own. Eventually, they can become competent at carrying out tasks that would take human workers hours or days to complete.

I've been hearing my whole life how automation was coming for all our jobs. First it was giant robots replacing big burly men on factory assembly lines. Now it seems to be increasingly sophisticated bits of code coming after paper-movers like me. I'm not sure we're there yet, quite, but the NYT piece does make a compelling argument that we're getting close.

The real question is, why is this a bad thing? And the obvious answer is people need to support themselves, and every job cut is one less person who can do that. But what I really mean is, if we can get the outputs we need to live well with one less person having to put in a day's work to get there, what does it say about us that we haven't worked out a way to make that a good thing?

Put another way, how come we haven't worked out a better way to share resources and get everyone what they need to thrive when we honestly don't need as much labor-hours for them to "earn" it as we once did?

I don't have the solution, but if some enterprising progressive politician wants to get on that, they could do worse. I keep hearing how Democrats need bold new ideas directed to helping the working class.

More on the Coming AI-Job-Pocalypse

I’m a LinkedIn Executive. I See the Bottom Rung of the Career Ladder Breaking. (X)

Paul Krugman: “What Deindustrialization Can Teach Us About The Effects of AI on Workers” (X)

How AI agents are transforming work—and why human talent still matters (X)

AI agents will do programmers' grunt work (X)

At Amazon, Some Coders Say Their Jobs Have Begun to Resemble Warehouse Work (X)

Why Esther Perel is going all in on saving the American workforce in the age of AI

Junior analysts, beware: Your coveted and cushy entry-level Wall Street jobs may soon be eliminated by AI (X)

The biggest barrier to AI adoption in the business world isn’t tech – it’s user confidence  (X)

Experts predicted that artificial intelligence would steal radiology jobs. But at the Mayo Clinic, the technology has been more friend than foe. (X)

AI Will Devastate the Future of Work. But Only If We Let It (X)

AI in the workplace is nearly 3 times more likely to take a woman’s job as a man’s, UN report finds (X)

Klarna CEO predicts AI-driven job displacement will cause a recession (X)

& on AI Generally

19th-century Catholic teachings, 21st-century tech: How concerns about AI guided Pope Leo’s choice of name (X)

Will the Humanities Survive Artificial Intelligence? (X)

Two Paths for A.I. (X)

The Danger of Outsourcing Our Brains: Counting on AI to learn for us makes humans boring, awkward, and gullible. (X)

AI Is a Weapon Pointed at America. Our Best Defense Is Education. (X)

The Trump administration has asked artificial intelligence publishers to rebalance what it considers to be 'ideological bias' around actions like protecting minorities and banning hateful content. (X)

What is Google even for anymore? (X)

AI can spontaneously develop human-like communication, study finds

AI Didn’t Invent Desire, But It’s Rewiring Human Sex And Intimacy (X)

Mark Zuckerberg Wants AI to Solve America’s Loneliness Crisis. It Won’t. (X)

The growing environmental impact of AI data centers’ energy demands

Tesla Is Launching Robotaxis in Austin. Safety Advocates Are Concerned (X)

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act would ban states from regulating AI (X)

& on the Job-Pocalypse & Other Labor-Related Shenanigans Generally, Too

What Unions Face With Trump EOs (X)

AI may be exposing jobseekers to discrimination. Here’s how we could better protect them (X)

Jamie Dimon says he’s not against remote workers—but they ‘will not tell JPMorgan what to do’  (X)

Direct-selling schemes are considered fringe businesses, but their values have bled into the national economy. (X)

Are you "functionally unemployed"? Here's what the unemployment rate doesn't show. (X)

Being monitored at work? A new report calls for tougher workplace surveillance controls  (X)

Josh Hawley and the Republican Effort to Love Labor (X)

Karl Marx’s American Boom (X)

Hiring slows in U.S. amid uncertainty over Trump’s trade wars

Vanishing immigration is the ‘real story’ for the economy and a bigger supply shock than tariffs, analyst says (X)

[eightyonekilograms]

You’ll never get me to buy ad-free tumblr you staff-plant ass m

The dumb thing about this accusation is, I think I’m actually a lot more strident about asking people to pay for Tumblr than the Tumblr staff are. They seem pretty chill about it based on the posts I’ve seen. Which makes sense: if Tumblr goes under, what do they care, they’ll just get another job. But I’d lose a community that I really enjoy and which I’ve sunk quite a bit of time and effort into.

Look, it’s your money and you can do whatever you want with it. But I am honestly kind of baffled by people’s absolute refusal to pay for websites that they use, even though on a dollars-per-hour basis, it’s the biggest no-brainer purchase there is. Ad-free tumblr is $40/year. That’s like… two and a half movie tickets for something a lot of people are using for multiple hours per day. And the staff isn’t lying to you about the costs: after payroll taxes and health insurance and whatnot, the all-up cost of one junior software engineer is about $250,000/year. Bandwidth for serving images and video is also expensive as fuck. It does in fact take quite a bit of money to keep something like this running, even without making a single dime of profit. 

[virgil-my-emo-son]

One Business Card Lighter

Dukeceit Week Day 4, Hair/Teeth!

Dukeceit week is run by @imnotgrimimjustagrumpyreaper ! @dukeceitweek @dukeceit-week-2024

I feel like I kind of cheated with the prompt... this is a punk singer Remus x comp sci professor Janus fic LOL. I'm so happy with this AU and honestly I might expand on it in the future. I've been working on a giant paper about punk fashion history so I tried to get the punk stuff as accurate as possible! Listened to a lot of Sex Pistols during the writing of this fic!

Also there's a fnaf reference in here if anyone's a fnaf fan 👀

Enjoy!!

Ao3

Janus stood awkwardly at the back of the room, holding his old fashioned in one hand, the other fiddling idly with the twist of orange zest in the glass. His eyes, however, were undistracted, glued to the small stage at the front of the bar.

He came to Junior’s for their jazz nights on Thursdays. He knew all of the hits that the bands usually played, and he was always interested to hear their original work. Sometimes it made Janus question why the artist had picked up music in the first place, and sometimes it made him wonder why the hell they were playing in a tiny little bar in the middle of the city instead of in the stadium just across the river.

Janus was used to Thursday nights. He liked Thursday nights.

But tonight was a Friday, and Janus had never been to Junior’s on a Friday.

For one thing, it was far more crowded than he was used to, mostly college students who were either freshly 21 or had good-enough fake IDs. Janus stayed at the back of the room, leaning against the wall and sipping on his drink, taking his eyes off the stage for a moment to scan the crowd. It would be a little awkward running into one of his freshmen from Computer Science 170 at a bar.

Janus only taught one 100-level class this semester, so it was a little less likely he’d run into those students than the juniors and seniors from his software engineering courses. Those students might be legally allowed in Junior’s, but it wouldn’t make an interaction any less uncomfortable.

Janus looked back at the stage. For another thing, Fridays were not jazz nights.

Fridays were punk nights.

The band onstage was… the best word Janus could think of was outrageous. He didn’t mean it negatively, but there was no denying they were provocative.

The drummer and bassist both had long hair. The drummer’s was pulled back, revealing a sleeveless shirt covered in strategic rips and tears, while the bassist’s fell in dark curtains over his white T-shirt that Janus was pretty sure had an upside-down crucifix. The guitarist’s hair was spiked to heaven, and he wore a jacket covered with enough patches and pins that Janus couldn’t tell what the original fabric was, with a T-shirt beneath reading FUCK OFF.

But what really caught his attention was the singer.

He was short, but the presence with which he commanded the stage made him seem seven feet tall. He marched around the stage in beat up work boots and dark, ripped jeans. A few tears near his thigh were patched with safety pins, affixing them to a grey Sex Pistols T-shirt with the eyes of each of the band’s members scribbled out. His hair was a calico dye job of orange, a weird orangey blond Janus could only assume was the result of an attempt to bleach the orange out, and dark brunette in spots he’d missed with both the orange and the bleach.

He was striking, and Janus found himself unable to stop watching his tongue as he rolled the “r” in “antichrist” during a jerky rendition of “Anarchy in the UK.”

Suddenly, the singer looked up, making direct eye contact with Janus. He winked—Janus could’ve sworn directly at him—as he sang, “Don’t know what I want, but I know how to get it!”

Janus suddenly couldn’t look at him any longer, a blush heating up his face. He took a fortifying sip of his alcohol.

Janus stayed for the rest of the set, despite not knowing a single one of the songs they played or even whether they were covers or originals. The fact that he recognized “Anarchy in the UK” was only because of his friend Virgil’s high school punk phase, and even that was a small miracle.

That singer…

“Thank you for coming out tonight!” He yelled over the drummer doing a long roll on the snare. “My name is Remus and we’re Hair and Teeth and fuck the IRS and fuck the military and fuck you all!” He kicked his foot up as the drum roll concluded with a smash on the cymbal.

The crowd went crazy, cheering and clapping and yelling stuff Janus couldn’t quite make out. The band walked offstage, and Janus was sure he locked eyes with Remus as he threw a kiss over his shoulder and disappeared into the back room.

The bar began to empty out as the evening got later and later, and Janus found himself sitting on one of the barstools, chatting with the bartender. It wasn’t the usual Thursday bartender, rather, a man in a red satin shirt with a loud laugh. He was fun to talk to, but all Janus could think about was Remus.

“Say, do you know the band just playing?” Janus set down his glass, leaning a bit on the bar. He’d moved on from his cocktail to a series of low proof beers. His small house was within walking distance of Junior’s, but despite his high tolerance for alcohol, he didn’t want to get too drunk.

“I do.” The bartender smiled. “I know them very well.”

“In what sense?”

The bartender indicated his head at something over Janus’s shoulder. “My brother.”

Janus looked behind him to see the singer, Remus, walking up to the bar.

His chest leapt.

“Can I have something on the house?” Remus stood by the bar, leaning on it with his forearms.

“No.” The bartender raised a judgmental eyebrow. “What makes you think I’d do that?”

“I’m your baby brother, Roman! You love me!”

Roman rolled his eyes. “No free drinks.”

Remus turned to Janus. “He’s so annoying.” His eyes raked up and down Janus, and he desperately wished he’d taken the time to change into something other than the pinstriped button-up shirt and plaid slacks he’d taught in. “Are you going to a wedding?”

Janus blinked. “Pardon?”

“You’re dressed all fancy.” Remus gestured to his outfit.

“No wedding, I’m afraid. Came from work.”

“What’s work?” Remus’s head tilted. “Office job? You The Man we hated on for an hour during our set?”

Janus gave a short laugh. “Not really. I’m a professor at Sanders University, computer science.”

Remus mimed a yawn. “Computer science? Boring.”

“And you’re a musician full-time, I assume?” Janus gave him a quick once-over. “You look the part, Remus.”

“Thank you, I am!” Remus winked. “You already know my name, so what’s yours, handsome?”

“Stop flirting in front of me right now.” Roman interjected, pointing a finger at Remus. “I don’t need to hear this. Out.” His finger moved to the door.

“Fine.” Remus moved his hand to hover over Janus’s. “Can I take your hand, handsome?”

“Depends. Where are you taking it?” A grin twitched at Janus’s mouth.

“Out of this bar!” Roman called over his shoulder.

“Yes.” Janus looked back to Remus, smiling in earnest.

A twinkle in his eye, Remus grabbed his hand and pulled him out the door of Junior’s. The street outside was busy, one of the main roads in town, and the glow from the streetlamps and signs of other bars, restaurants, and shops lit everything up.

Remus leaned against the wall. “So, come here often?”

Janus laughed. “Yes, every Thursday, actually. They have good jazz.”

“Jazz? Yeah, you’d like jazz.” Remus nodded.

“Whatever does that mean?”

“You just look like you’d listen to jazz music.” Remus nodded to his whole figure. “So, then, why’d you come tonight?”

“I just had a… a feeling I should.” Janus looked down. “I think I made the right decision, though.”

“So do I, handsome. I never got your name.” Remus tilted his head again.

“Janus.”

“Last name?”

“Constance.”

“Janus Constance?”

“Janus Constance.”

“Mm.” Remus hummed. “Interesting.”

Janus fumbled in his pocket for a moment. “I should be going, but I… here’s my card. Call me.” He held out a business card.

“A business card at the bar is hilarious.” Remus took it. “You’re definitely a professor.”

“Did you think I was lying?”

“Well, now I know for sure.”

“Mm.” Janus was amused.

“I’ll call you.” Remus’s eyes twinkled. “Professor Constance.”

“Please.” Janus rolled his eyes. “It’s Janus.”

“Alright, Janus. I’ll call you.” Remus took Janus’s hand again and held it up to his mouth, giving it a short kiss before winking again and walking away. Janus was left blushing on the sidewalk, one business card lighter.

[wardensantoineandevka]

Firesprite (The Playroom, Horizon Call of the Mountain) located in Liverpool has an opening for a Junior Narrative Designer. They imagine this as, ideally, a hybrid role where a candidate is available to work one to three days out of the studio, but they will consider anyone throughout the UK who prefers to work entirely remotely.

They're looking for someone with hands-on experience in Unreal 5 or similar engines. Knowledge of Final Draft or another script software and Articy or another branching narrative tool is beneficial.

I am not affiliated with this listing, Firesprite, or Playstation Studios. Please do not ask me questions or for clarifications about this role or the studio because I do not have answers. Check the listing for further details and to verify any information.

[alitgblog]

part four of asking y'all who's the best at their job just because I'm curious and want to make polls lmao

time for a non performance category where I combine basically a bunch of STEM and STEM-adjacent careers even though I, an engineering graduate with a biotech job involving working directly with doctors, can tell you there is definitely a difference between doctors, scientists, engineers, and software/computer engineers

tbf most of these are medicine anyway

[fossilizations]

talking to a guy i don’t know at family holiday party and he says “software engineers” and i hear “sophomore and juniors” and ask him about working with students😑

[merlinfromberlin]

So You Know I Care

As Ratchet waits for Bumblebee to wake up after being tortured at Tyger Pax, he makes a promise.

Warnings: Coma, Nightmares, Aftermath of Torture & Violence, mentions puking but no graphic description, Engine Rumbling Chronology: Pre-Canon - Tyger Pax Wordcount: 1003 words

Set in the same universe as my story Make You Feel Alright, but can very easily be read as a stand alone.

Written for @angstober - Day 09: Promise. Prompt list can be found here: X

Story below the cut or on AO3.

Ratchet’s vigil had been long, solitary and harrowing. 

He had not left the medbay, not left Bumblebee’s side, in more than a decacycle at this point—not even to recharge or refuel. Instead, he had been sustaining himself on short, fitful naps and what little energon First Aid and Optimus brought with them every time either of them came to check on Bumblebee. Others had visited, too, but Ratchet could barely recall them, their presence or absence irrelevant as his sparkling remained in stasis.

Once it had become obvious that the yellow bot would not wake any time soon, Ratchet had been offered to link the software monitoring the youngling’s vitals to his HUD. This way, the senior medic could have left the room to take care of himself and still monitored Bumblebee’s current status. He would have known as soon as First Aid, who had been assigned as the young bot’s primary physician once Ratchet signed off duty to stay with him, when the youngling began to wake. Nonetheless, he had refused, instead opting to remain with his sparkbyte at all times. Everything else would have felt traitorous. 

First Aid had argued at first, but, even though the young mech had grown into a fine medic in his own right, masterfully adapting to the role this War had pushed onto him too fast, he had faced no chance against Ratchet’s particular kind of stubbornness. It had bested many a bot before First Aid and it would best many more after him. Once the physician had truly set his mind on something, especially when it concerned his patients or family unit, he could no longer be swayed from it. So, in the end, the junior medic had given in and allowed Ratchet to remain at his sparkling’s side, accepting that not even the call of Primus himself could have removed the old bot from his post.

Sitting at his sparkbyte’s medberth in solitary silence, Ratchet was unable to stop his thoughts from drfiting back to the surgery that had started his vigil. When Bumblebee had been brought to him in the triage centre at Tyger Pax, his small frame had been littered with evidence of the torture Megatron had subjected him to. Every dent, every cut and laceration had told its own story at the same time that it added to the kaleidoscope of cruelties his sparkling had endured at the servos of the warlord. Most brutal and damning of all, however, had been the hole in Bumblebee’s mangled, torn throat where his voicebox should have sat. Ratchet had barely been able to keep himself from purging at the sight of it. Thinking of the kind of brutal force needed to inflict such a wound still made him nauseous.

With the memories had come doubts, too. In the triage centre, Ratchet had done his best to push aside his overwrought caregiver protocols and focus only on the medical task in front of him—keeping the patient, even if he happened to be his sparkling, alive and as intact as possible. Still, he had been uncharacteristically anxious, almost panicked, in the OR. Now that he was looking back at his actions with the privilege of calm consideration, he could not stop thinking about the things he could have, should have really, done differently, done better. Maybe, if he had been a better medic that cycle, if he had only been a medic, not a worried caretaker, he could have salvaged more of his sparkbyte’s voicebox.

As Bumblebee’s small servo suddenly twitched in his, Ratchet hastily looked up. The young bot had not woken up as the medic had allowed himself to hope for just a moment. Instead, his faceplate was distorted in fear as his optics flickered without a trace of lucidity. His intake was moving silently, mouthing whimpers and whines he could no longer voice. His antennae were pressed painfully flat to his helm. The medic froze, unable to move as he watched his sparkbyte with ever-growing horror.

It had always been exceptionally easy to tell when Bumblebee was having nightmares. Even as a sparkling, before he had learned to trust Optimus and Ratchet with his fears and insecurities, they had always been able to tell when the little yellow mech faced bad dreams. He would not be particularly loud, he rarely ever was, but as soon as his recharge turned sour, Bumblebee would cry and sniffle and whimper, alarming his caretakers that something was wrong.

Now, the little bot was utterly silent, unable to voice his distress because Megatron had ripped out his voicebox and Ratchet had failed to fix it.

A small tremble running through Bumblebee’s frame pulled the medic back into the present. He softly pressed the small yellow servo he was still holding in his own as he leaned forward and rested his forehead on the youngling’s. Carefully, Ratchet wrapped his EM field around the little bot and softly began to rumble his engine in an attempt to soothe his sparkling. Both were shaky at first, but grew steady after only a few nanocycle.

The only thing Ratchet did not do to try and calm him was talk. The sweet nothings he would usually murmur to Bumblebee appeared horridly hollow in the face of the violence that had been inflicted upon him now. How could he ever tell his sparkbyte that everything would be alright again now that the medic failed to make him alright?

It took a bit, but finally Bumblebee fell back into peaceful recharge, his bad dream fading in a way that the waking nightmare he was still unaware of living in would never allow. Even as the little bot calmed, Ratchet remained in his position, curled protectively over his youngling’s frame as he vented heavily. When he ultimately managed to lift himself up again, brownish-gold coolant was streaking down his cheeks.

“I promise you, sparkbyte," Ratchet mumbled later, once his tears had subsided. "I will never again fail you like this. You will be alright."

[azubuikeworld]

Who Is a Technical Writer?

A technical writer is a professional who creates clear, concise documentation that explains complex information in a way that's easy to understand. They translate technical concepts into user-friendly content.

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What Do They Write?

Technical writers produce a wide range of materials, including:

User manuals

Instruction guides

Product documentation

How-to articles

API documentation

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

White papers

Training materials

Online help systems

Software release notes

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Where Do They Work?

Industries that employ technical writers include:

Tech/software companies

Engineering firms

Medical and healthcare

Manufacturing

Finance

Government agencies

Telecommunications

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Key Skills of a Technical Writer

1. Excellent writing and communication

2. Ability to understand complex technical information

3. Attention to detail

4. Research and interviewing skills

5. Organization and clarity

6. Collaboration with engineers, designers, developers, etc.

7. Basic design and formatting skills

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Popular Tools Used

Microsoft Word / Google Docs

Markdown editors

Adobe FrameMaker / InDesign

MadCap Flare

Confluence / Jira

Snagit / Camtasia (for visuals and screen recordings)

Git / GitHub (for version control)

XML / HTML / CSS (basic web formatting)

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Education & Background

A bachelor’s degree in English, Communications, Technical Writing, Engineering, or Computer Science is common.

Certifications can help (e.g., from the Society for Technical Communication (STC) or Coursera).

Some come from writing backgrounds; others transition from technical fields (like software development or engineering).

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Career Path & Growth

Junior Technical Writer → Technical Writer → Senior Technical Writer

Specializations: API writer, UX writer, Information Architect, Content Strategist, etc.

Many go freelance or work as consultants.

Remote work is common in this field.

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Why It's a Good Career

High demand, especially in tech

Remote flexibility

Well-paying (entry level: $50k–$70k; senior roles: $90k+)

Good for writers with an analytical mind

[the-eldritch-it-gay]

I was just reminded that in uni, because I was majoring in computer science (technically software engineering), during the junior seminar we were like informed and had to meet or check out a bunch of potential employers and one of them was the fucking CIA and I was there like girl I want the American empire to collapse and on god I will see it but I had to pretend to be neutral and write an essay about like why working for them would be interesting or whatever. And I had to watch a video with people from the CIA talking to uni students and whatever and the YouTube video had comments disabled which felt like, yeah, I bet you guys had to disable the comments huh. The video talked about like “you don’t even have to have any combat or gun training, we’ll teach you :)”. It was insane.