I write code for Humans & text for Robots
Hi!
My Name is Ibrahim, I write code for Humans.
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One weekend morning, I got up at 7 am. I wore a white t-shirt and black shorts, I tightened my shoes and went down to gym in our apartment building. I had one machine in mind. The treadmill. This wasn't a very active year for me. The only exercise I was familiar with was walking to the bus stop to get to work, and walking to the bus stop to get to school. But that day, I was determined to do cardio.
I have the bad habit of reaching for my phone the very instant I wake up. I start straight with emails, where I get replies from coworkers or companies I work with. They respond to my emails from the evening before, ask for status reports, or schedule meetings. I read and respond from bed before starting my day. But last week, I realized something that has gone unnoticed for a while. I had no new emails from my coworkers, but my screen was full of unread messages. In fact, I had read all messages that mattered, yet there were more in my inbox. I pulled the left navigation and looked at my spam folder. It was empty.
A CSS reset is a tool that reconciles the differences in rendering between different browsers. In the old days, each browser was its own beast. They each came with their own default styles. Internet Explorer had different rules for your un-styled H1 tags vs Chrome or Firefox. Every browser set their defaults to what they thought was a good starting point. There were no predefined rules that they all followed. It was more of a culture than a standard. Fast forward to today, and each web browser had complete overhaul. Yet we see more consolidation.
There is a special feeling I get on a Sunday evening. Sunday is the weekend and I am home relaxing with my family after a well deserved break. But Sunday evening is the end of the weekend, the end of that pleasant break. I have to go back to work the next day. This is the time I like to sit by the kitchen table by myself, thinking about a better future. One where I don't have to obey the traditional rules of work. I don't want to put my life on pause on a weekly basis and dedicate the time to my employer for a modest fee.
As a Linux user, I can't help but spend most of my time on the command line. Not that the GUI is not efficient, but there are things that are simply faster to do with the keyboard.
If there is one thing I learned from obsessing over Stack Overflow, it's how to find solutions. Soon I will have answered over 900 questions and this number will keep going up. This is not to say it is a lot, many users have much more quality answers. But If you have done anything over a 1000 times then you had the chance to screw up a lot. Screwing up is synonym to getting experience here.
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It was 7am when my phone rang. Instead of an alarm, it was my recruiter disturbing me from a pleasant dream. It was too early for a phone call or to be caught off guard, so I did not answer. I went to take a shower and get ready for the day. On my way to work, I listened to the voice mail she had left.
Not too long ago, I made a living working as a contractor where I would hop from project to project. Some were short term where I would work for a week and quickly deliver my service. Others lasted a couple months where I would make enough money to take some time off. I preferred the short ones because they allowed me to charge a much higher rate for a quick job. Not only I felt like my own boss, but I also felt like I didn't have to work too hard to make a decent living. My highest rates were still reasonable, and I always delivered high quality service. That was until I landed a gig with a large company.
When was the last time you needed to buy a new PC? Two years ago? Three years ago? The last PC I built was in 2009. I had to upgrade because I pushed the previous one I built to the limit and that was in 2004. A 2009 desktop is old in computer years, but not so much in processing power. It maybe true that there are a zillion new processors out in the market and their benchmark show exponential improvement. But to me benchmarking is just a marketing gimmick. PC sales are plunging but they are the wrong indicator to determine the advancement of the technology. The reason we are not buying PCs anymore is because those we have are already pretty amazing.
a book by Ibrahim Diallo
After the explosive reception of my story, The Machine Fired Me, I set out to write a book to tell the before and after.
I started as a minimum wage laborer in Los Angeles and I set out to reach the top of the echelon in Silicon Valley. Every time I made a step forward, I was greeted with the harsh changing reality of the modern work space.
Getting fired is no longer reserved to those who mess up. Instead, it's a popular company strategy to decrease expenses and increase productivity.
Every little corner has a story. Sometimes a camera tells the story and a picture is worth a thousand words.
There are professional photographers and then there is me who happens to have a camera on my phone. Here's to what came out.
