Every company you’ve ever worked for has enough work for a full time graphic designer? I’ve worked at some bigger companies that had someone for that role, but mostly no, the companies don’t have people for small tasks that don’t come up too often. That means people have to move out of their lane and do some additional work. That’s a lot of what working at a smaller company is all about. You wear many hats and many of them you learn on the job. Engineers tend to be near the top of the food chain in terms of figuring stuff like that so they get those tasks sometimes.

This life in a small company. How has this never been something you’ve had to deal with?

This comment requires more detail. As far as I can tell the search bar is only useful for typing “cmd” and getting a command prompt window. I’m pretty sure that’s all I ever use it for…

Windows search sucks balls so hard it boggles the mind how it can suck so bad. It’s like they created the search bar for Windows XP and haven’t updated it since. How can a company with so many smart people create something that shitty and never fix it?

So anyway, if I’m missing the toggle for “make windows search not suck”, please fill me in.

I am an engineer. I’ve been an engineer for 25 years. I manage a team of engineers. I think I have a very good idea of the job role of an engineer, thank you.

An engineer often has to figure things out. This is not some line worker being asked to weld when they don’t know how. This is simply a “do some google searches and follow them” type of task. This should be well within the capabilities of an engineer to handle.

I’m with you. The company is paying you for your time and if learning a new task is what you’re getting paid for, great. If they “punish” you for it, for example “now you have to stay late and finish your other work” or you get dinged for not meeting your regular metrics, then they’re full of shit. But if the request is simply please take care of this thing because we don’t have an expert to can, then you just do it. I don’t get what the issue is. It’s interesting new stuff you get to learn.

However to be honest, I am in management and I manage a team of engineers, and I expect to them to be flexible individuals. Sometimes they’re doing technical drawings, sometimes new development, sometimes assembling prototypes with tweezers, sometimes they’re learning new software, and sometimes they have to create renders for customer presentations. If any of them gave me shit about “not my responsibility” I’d be pretty pissed off because IMHO an engineer needs to be a flexible individual especially in a small company.

Um… that’s not quite right. Here’s the thing, if you earn $100k and invest it in pre-tax (401k) or post-tax (Roth), and you pay the same tax rate throughout, then with both investment strategies you will end up with EXACTLY the same amount of money. The only benefit of a Roth is if you assume you have a higher tax rate in the future when you want to pull it out. If your tax rate is the same both now and in the future, then Roth and 401k are equivalent investment vehicles. If you don’t believe me, do the math yourself.

Slightly more detail. The reason this is true is that return on your investment and the tax are both percentages of your base investment and the math doesn’t care which order you multiply one versus the other. So let’s say you make a 500% return on your investment and the tax rate is 30%

$100k * (0.7 tax rate) * (5 ROI) = $350k Tax first Roth

$100k * (5 ROI) * (0.7 tax rate) = $350k Tax after 401k

So the take-aways are:

401k wins if you have company matching. ALWAYS invest at least up to company matching because that’s free money.

Roth wins if your tax rate in the future is higher than now. (this is not necessarily a good bet because your tax rate will probably be lower once you’re retired.)

Oh I know. But every time I try to go back and play counterstrike it bothers me that I can’t aim down the sights and I really wish that was something they “fixed” in counterstrike 2.

After all this time, it bothers me way more than it should that you don’t aim down the sights.

So I’m curious, how did you end up? Is there anything in your adult life that indicates your capabilities are above average?

Problem is there’s a catch 22. If you’re not lucid enough to answer those questions, you’re not lucid enough side whether you live or die from a legal standpoint.

Every law I know that allows euthanasia requires that the person have a terminal illness and enough mental faculties to make the decision. You run the risk of a loved one getting tried for murder if you ask them to give you the drugs and you are not competent to make the decision yourself.