maxehnert

I was looking over pictures of this place last night actually. There's a national park there too which looks other worldly.

Then of course I looked at flights and it's about 40hrs of travel and $1300 so probably not making that trip in this lifetime.

They're probably the largest hospital provider in the country. Looking at their wiki it says there's 152 hospitals and 1400 outpatient facilities. Plus all the other VA responsibilities they fulfill.

It's a big organization and they have a lot of 'customers'

Now how are the bankers supposed to get any work done.

This guy is still active on reddit too. If you look at the user profile. He's made a few posts over the years I guess on this. Also apparently he was a male model in case any of you think you might be so fortunate as to so day share his experiences ;)

When I used to work on turbo generators, the kind you find at power plants I saw carnage of what happens when those blow up. The retaining rings on the ends, typically a few thousand pounds were prone to breaking on older generators because of the alloy used. When that would happen it would send the projectiles through steel and concrete walls.

The balance bunker for load testing and balancing these at the shop I worked in was a pit 40 feet underground with 50 ton caps placed over top.

You're right, I should have been more clear. I wasn't applying for junior positions anymore but most of the technique is what I did the last time I applied for jobs when I was looking for more junior positions.

Thanks for the kind words.

For cover letters, I think I'm using template more loosely and probably should have provided examples. The template part is for describing myself, however I still write out a paragraph or two specific to that company. I think I noted on researching the place before hand so you can include your favorite things about the place in the letter.

I completely agree. It's incredibly frustrating to stop working on any side projects and stop learning any framework/library stuff to focus exclusively on algorithmic questions for weeks or months. That's why I tried to make it clear you have to just push through and give it everything you can so you can get back to doing fun stuff again. No one likes doing this but lowly developers that just need a job can't do much about it unfortunately.

I mentioned I track everything and try to apply in a small timeline to bunch interviews together. Most places want 2-3 phone interviews before anything else which at most meant leaving work a half hour early (I just go in early or stay late another day). When it comes to on sites, well I guess I had a lot of vacation time from not taking any previously.

I hadn't really thought about that before, but yes the time issues could be very challenging to juggle if you aren't in an ideal situation.

Hey thanks for the kind words. I wasn't sure how receptive people would be to this when I originally wrote it out but I'm glad some people enjoyed it. Hopefully it helps a few people.

You can't 'retire' in the sense that you receive a pension with less than 20 years. Which means you were at least an E5 (you had to mess up a lot to retire as an E5). You are certainly higher than an O3 if you were an officer.

Presumably after 20 years you've also got other savings such as the TSP retirement account which the military matches 50% on (up to a certain amount only I believe). Your retirement payout can be based on your highest 3 years of service (you get to choose now), which are typically going to be the last few, which if much of that is spent overseas will significantly increase your retirement package.

You still won't be living in SF but you should be able to live pretty comfortably in a normally priced city as long as the retirement package isn't your only form of savings. Bonus points if you'er now 20 years into paying off your house as well.