Location: Brisbane, Australia
Remote: Yes, or hybrid locally
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: Node, TypeScript, MySQL, AWS, Express, React/Next.js, Kafka, C#/.NET, Docker, Linux, Git, Claude Code/OpenCode
Résumé/CV: available on request via email
Email: hn@kirkeby.io
Full-stack engineer with 3+ years of experience building real-time Node/TypeScript and React SaaS applications deployed on AWS as part of a distributed team. An additional 6 years of experience doing software testing work in product teams.
I'm after a new opportunity build exciting products, learn more, and work with a great team.
It is very rare that I've come across a well-defined ticket. The most well-defined tickets were the ones I wrote myself, and even those had gaps because I wasn't typically the product owner.
It's the same story that it's always been, agents or not, that engineers need to be analysts and translate poorly defined criteria into something that's fit for purpose.
I agree. I think the poorly defined criteria that we have all gotten accustomed to is thanks to the many layers of the game of whispers that we've added in in organizations between the needs of the customer and the engineers.
Something I've been doing in my own organization, but also trying to help other organizations with, is getting engineers closer to the customers now that building and the time it takes to build is no longer the resource, which is scarce.
It's not my kind of workflow but you can download a graphical client like Neovide, which I think has options for opening directly from your file browser.
I typically have a terminal-heavy workflow so it's very rare that I'm browsing to files from within my desktop, but if I am using Dolphin to look for a file I have a "Open terminal here" shortcut and then I'll usually just run "nvim doc.md".
Why not give it a try? You'll likely find that there's an adjustment period and you can always switch back to your old editor if you don't like it. The beauty of it is that you can build it into whatever IDE you want instead of having useless features shoved into your IDE whether you use them or not.
It's still not super intuitive with a non-trivial config and plugins. I had enough things that hooked into LSP (Mason, linting, inlay hints, etc.) that I needed to spend a couple of weekend afternoons moving my configs over. For a lot of my config it was an all or nothing migration.
Background: I was a software tester for 6.5 years; currently a software engineer, having worked with dedicated testers for about 5 years.
"QA" should exist regardless of whether you think dedicated software testing staff fit into your org. The whole team is responsible for assuring quality.
Dedicated software testers verify that the solution actually does what it's meant to do, and good software testers become deeply knowledgeable about the product and how features interact. They are ultimately a second pair of eyes, and should have a direct line to product owners or customers.
This can't be automated. The ongoing tests for verifying existing features continue to work without regression can and should be automated (throughout the dev process), adding generative AI to the human verification step is a recipe for disaster.
In Australia the answer is political lobbying, without a doubt.
We had an emissions trading scheme[0] in 2012 meant to help in a transition to clean energy sources that was aggressively lobbied against by Australia's largest polluters and lasted only 2 years before being repealed by the incoming government by labeling it a "tax" that citizens would pay for. This led to a decade of policy stagnation[1] where we could've been transitioning away from fossil fuels.
So while energy density is definitely a factor, political lobbying is absolutely a factor.
> by labeling it a "tax" that citizens would pay for.
Are the quotes here implying there wasn't a cost imposed on the public to artificially speed up a transition to green energy? Might as well be honest about it and say it's a "temporary sacrifice for the greater good" or something. Otherwise it's just another form of political spin.
The government of the day did not and never used the word "tax". They essentially turned pollution into a commodity, which could be traded between companies who wanted to pollute more and rewarded companies who transitioned to clean energy. See the primary Wikipedia article on emissions trading schemes[0] for more information.
The political opposition continuously spun it as a "tax", in an attempt to stir outrage and win the next election, which they succeeded in[1]. The incoming government was and still is largely funded by fossil fuel companies, so they repealed the scheme.
It was an enforcement of paying a (small) portion of the externalities as a result of the use of fossil fuels.
The "tax" was to be paid by the largest polluters, hence their lobbying against it. It wasn't something the citizens had to pay for unless the largest polluters decided to raise their prices as a result of this "tax".
Asking polluters to decrease their profits, as it becomes increasingly obvious that their profits are based on making life worse for the entire planet for the future, I think, is not too grand an ask. "That's how it has always been" is not a reason not to act to improve "how it could be".
Those schemes always seemed to me like a whole lot of lipstick and pretty packaging on something that could just be pitched with more honesty, and without creating a maze of extra corporate accounting costs and loopholes. Just raise a tax to pay for investment in green energy that will eventually compete on price and be self-sustaining, while also providing lots of environmental benefits and potentially increase industrial competition with China.
The only reason a politician would come up with a complex carbon scheme like that is if they knew a tax would be unpopular with the public. Which mostly translates to a lack of good communication or a disregard for the public's intelligence.
You've gotta understand that most people outside of IT have very little to no computer literacy. They want something that just works, and Linux doesn't do that.
I've completely replaced Windows with Bazzite since November and it's been great for me, but it's not been without issues. Those issues are doable for me, but if I put Bazzite, Fedora, Linux Mint or any of the other beginner friendly distros on anybody else's PC they'll encounter a roadblock that they won't know how to resolve and that'll taint their Linux experience. Not to mention spotty hardware drivers (I've had several wifi drivers just stop working with an update, which is infuriating if you don't have a reliable wired connection), volunteer software for many configurations (OpenRGB doesn't support my motherboard), nVidia drivers and finding alternatives to software people know and use like Office and Photoshop.
These might not seem like a big deal, but they're dealbreakers for many and they'd rather put up with some dodgy window resize behaviour or their OS spying on them.
To add onto this, I used to frequent a cafe near my old work and had quite a good rapport with the owner. One day I was going for lunch and wanted to check their menu, pick something new and then go order. When I went and ordered it she said she they no longer serve that and couldn't get onto the developer to change their menu on the site. They were a couple working 7 days a week, only taking public holidays off, so it was easily the least of their concerns.
I think if you are half capable you should just adopt the project and do it for free.
I have a web app that is a html document with an [edit] button at the end. It points at edit.html which has a textarea, a password field and a submit button. (Below is a list of links to all pages in the folder starting with index-) The textarea shows the middle chunk of the html document. You edit it, fill out the password (the browser will do it) and press the save button. It posts to save.php which constructs a new index.html and save a copy as index-2026-03-18.html The link to the copy shows up on edit.html The edit link there points to edit.html?file=index-2026-03-18.html if you save it that will become the new index.html (it refuses to edit anything that isn't "index-\d\d\d\d-\d\d-\d\d\.html")
If each menu entry is: `<tr><td>Beer</td><td>$3.50</td></tr>` They can just edit, delete or copy and paste it. Simply: `<br>Beer $3.50` Would work just as well. If they screw up they can put back an older version.
Put your phone number on the edit page. Write some html tags on a napkin. `<br> <b> <i> <h3> <img> <a>`
They want more pages? make the /about folder drop index edit and save.php into it, remind them to make a link to it on the front page and they will figure it out.
Good question, I do such things because 1) web design is full of con artists 2) there is no money in restaurants, it is a horrible sector to be. I want as much of the business expenses on my plate. 3) I want a simple snappy website with a phone number, what time they are open and the menu. 4) I can do this in less than 10 minutes.
5) I love to code specially if the project isn't complicated. 6) It is hilarious to look at once every 3rd month. Some leave it in sterile perfection, some turn it into a geocities/myspace page, some go crazy with youtube videos. 7) I've never seen downtime, no one ever calls.
> Should their accountant work for free also?
If they did, do you think they get good service? Would they be allowed to pay for their food/drinks?
> And their waiters and kitchen staff?
Thats hard work man. Shit pay too usually. Ill fill it under almost free.
At first, I agreed with the sentiment that the earlier poster ought to do them a favor. But you're right. Business expense.
Although, I suppose if they (the proprietors) had up-to-date creds and such, maybe offering to remove the one item from the menu as favor would be a nice way to become a favorite customer. The rest is clearly their problem. And I'm pretty sure from the description that they won't have all the necessary documentation.
Firstly, I think you missed that they are small business-owners and simply do not have the time to manage this. Even if I volunteered to do charity work for a local business, they would still need to spend the time to get onto the old developer to transfer domain access, host access, billing info, etc.
Secondly, I no longer work near there and haven't gone to that cafe in about 5 years. I keep up with old colleagues who say the cafe is doing well, but now if I had taken on that work now I'm their contact.
Lastly, this is all ignoring the maintenance cost. What version of PHP? What version of Apache/NGINX/Traefik? Any security vulnerability in Ubuntu in the past half decade? Now we have to play the security cat & mouse game.
At the end of the day, while I don't want to go to Instagram/Facebook to find menus/opening hours, the truth is that it is significantly easier for the average person to just make a social media post.
I'm after a new opportunity build exciting products, learn more, and work with a great team.
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