I shouldn't be doing this on funded <OurBigBook> time which is until the end of May, but I was getting too nervous and decided to start a casual job search to test the waters.

In particular I want to see if I can get past the HR lady step without toning down my online profiles. If nothing works out for the next round I'll be hiding anything too spicy like:
* prominently seeking funding for <OurBigBook> on my <LinkedIn> profile
* <CIA 2010 covert communication websites> references. This will be my first job hunt since I have published that article. Wish me luck.
* https://cirosantilli.com/china-dictatorship/gay-putin[gay Putin] profile picture on <Stack Overflow>
Another interesting point is to see if French companies are more likely to reply given that <Ciro Santilli> studied at <École Polytechnique> which the French worship.

\Image[https://web.archive.org/web/20240707132335im_/https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/1200x800/public/images/methode/2017/04/06/0a2ae706-1a94-11e7-b4ed-ac719e54b474_1280x720_145124.jpg?itok=1PDxSxTA]
{title=https://cirosantilli.com/china-dictatorship/gay-putin[Gay Putin], currently used in <Ciro Santilli's Stack Overflow profile>}
{description=Ciro's profiles may be a bit too much for the HR ladies who reject his job applications on the spot. To be fair, perhaps not enough years of experience for certain applications and job hopping may have something to do with it too. But since they don't ever tell you anything not to get sued, we'll never know.}

I'm looking in particular either for:
* <machine learning>-adjacent jobs in companies that seem to be doing something that could further <AGI>, e.g. <automatic code generation> or <robotics> would be ideal
* <quantum computing>
* <systems programming>, which is what I actually have work experience with

I spent the last two weeks doing that:
* one week browsing everything of interest in <London> and <Paris> and sending applications to anything that seemed both relevant and interesting. Maintaining an application list at: <Job application by Ciro Santilli>{full}.
* one week on a very laborious but somewhat interesting take home exercise for <Linux kernel> engineer a <Canonical (company)>, makers of <Ubuntu>.

  I had a week to finish 5 practical coding and packaging questions, and I tried to do everything as perfectly as possible, but I somewhat underestimated the amount of work and wait needed to do everything and didn't manage to finish question 4 and missed 5. Oops let's see how that goes.

  At least this had a few good outcomes for the Internet as I tried to document things as nicely as I could where they were missing from <Google> as usual:
  * I re-tested <Linux Kernel Module Cheat> and made some small improvements. Things still worked from a <Ubuntu 24.10> host (using Docker to <Ubuntu 22.04>), and I also checked that kernel 6.8 builds and GDB step debugs after adding the newly required config `CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO_DWARF_TOOLCHAIN_DEFAULT`, also mentioned that at: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5416406/why-are-there-no-debug-symbols-in-my-vmlinux-when-using-gdb-with-proc-kcore/79598380#79598380[Why are there no debug symbols in my vmlinux when using gdb with /proc/kcore?]
  * I contributed some simple updates to https://github.com/martinezjavier/ldd3 getting it closer to work on Linux kernel v6.8. That repository aims to keep the venerable examples from Linux kernel module book <LDD3> alive on newer kernels, and is a very good source for kernel module developers.
  * https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37507320/how-to-compile-a-linux-kernel-module/79594642#79594642[How to compile a Linux kernel module?]: wrote a quick Ciro-approved tutorial
  * https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6034745/dynamic-array-in-linux-kernel-module/79601790#79601790[Dynamic array in Linux kernel module]: I gave an educational example of a dynamic byte array (like std::string) using the kvmalloc family of allocators
  * <quickemu>: this is a good <emulator manager> and I think I'll be using it for <Ubuntu> images when needed from now on. I wrote:
    * https://askubuntu.com/questions/884534/how-to-run-ubuntu-desktop-on-qemu/1545712#1545712[How to run Ubuntu desktop on QEMU?]: an introductory tutorial to the software as their README is not that good as is often the case. It's hard for project authors to predict what new users want or not. This is my second answer to this question, the https://askubuntu.com/questions/884534/how-to-run-ubuntu-desktop-on-qemu/1046792#1046792[previous one] focusing on a more manual approach without third party helpers.
    * https://www.reddit.com/r/commandline/comments/v85fmx/how_to_share_folder_between_guesthost_quickemu/[How to share folder between guest/host? (Quickemu)]: I explained how to setup a 9p mount to share a directory between guest and host
  * https://askubuntu.com/questions/496549/error-you-must-put-some-source-uris-in-your-sources-list/857433#857433[Error :: You must put some 'source' URIs in your sources.list]: updated this answer for <Ubuntu 24.04>. This issue comes up when you want to do either of:
    ``
    sudo apt build-dep
    sudo apt source
    ``
    which don't work by default, and my answer explains how to do it from the GUI and CLI. The CLI method is specially important for <Docker> images. Since Ubuntu doesn't offer a stable CLI method for this, the method breaks from time to time and we have to find the new config file to edit.
  * https://askubuntu.com/questions/248914/what-is-hardware-enablement-hwe/1546835#1546835p[What is hardware enablement (HWE)?]: I learned a bit better how Ubuntu structures its kernel releases for each <Ubuntu release>

    \Image[https://web.archive.org/web/20250506101112if_/https://i.sstatic.net/3sqTiQlD.png]
    {title=Linux kernel version used for each <Ubuntu release>}
    {description=
    In particular, Ubuntu has HWE kernels which are updated kernels for older releases. E.g.
    * 24.04.0 and 24.04.1 had kernel 6.8
    * 24.04.2 moved up to kernel 6.11, the same one used in 24.10, to support newer hardware
    }
    {height=600}
    {source=https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle}

  Some of the main issues I had were:
  * <compiling Linux kernel for Ubuntu> is extremely slow. I was used to compiling for embedded system with <Buildroot>, which finishes in minutes, but for Ubuntu is hours, presumably because they enable as many drivers as possible to make a single ISO work on as many different computers as possible, which makes sense, but also makes development harder
  * my <QEMU> setup for Ubuntu was not quite as streamlined and I relearned a few things and set up <quickemu>. By chance I had recently come across <quickemu> for testing <OurBigBook> on <MacOS>, but I had to learn a bit how to set it up reasonably too

I'll make sure to add two weeks of OurBigBook work after May to make up for this.


Post OurBigBook job search round 2025

Updates <span class="meta">/</span> Post OurBigBook job search round 2025

I see you're job searching. That makes the two of us. I'm looking to get into systems programming, although I don't have as much experience as you. I'm fresh out of college too 😔

Good luck to the both of us then. \i[Cheers].


Good Luck!

If you <don't be a pussy>[are a pussy and work a soul crushing job], this is one way to lie to yourself that your life is still worth living: do one cool thing every day.

Find a time in which your mind hasn't yet been destroyed by useless work, usually in the morning before work, and do one thing you actually like in life.

Work a little less well for you boss, and a little better for yourself. <Ross Ulbricht>:
> I hated working for someone else and trading my time for money with no investment in myself
Selling <drugs> online is not advisable however.

Even better, try to reach an official agreement with your employer to work 20% less than the standard work week. For example, you could work one day less every week, and do whatever you want on that day. It is not possible to push your passion to weekends, because your brain is too tired. "You keep all non-company-related IP you develop on that time" is a key clause obviously.

On a related note, good employers must allow employees to do whichever the <fuck> "crazy projects", "needed refactorings or other efficiency gains" and "learn things deeply" at least 20% of their time if employees want that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20%25_Project[]. Employees must choose if they want to do it one day a week or two hours per day. One day per month initiatives are <bullshit>. Another related name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_hour[genius hour].

Highly relevant on this topic: <video What Predicts Academic Ability? by Jordan B Peterson (2017)>.

\Video[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQlAfI91cZ8]
{title=I did it for me, Skyler}
{description=Pursuing a dream part time can make you feel afraid and tired. But at least, you will feel alive.}

Maybe you will be fired, but long term, having tried, or even succeeded your dream, or a <the side effects of ambitious goals are often the most valuable thing achieved>[one of its side effects], will be infinitely more satisfying.

The same goes for <school>, and maybe even more so because your parents can still support you there. Some <Gods> who actually followed this advice and <I'd rather starve>[didn't end up living under a bridge]:
* <George M. Church> "\[We\] hope that whatever problems... contributed to your lack of success... at Duke will not keep you from a successful pursuit of a productive career." Lol, as of 2019 the dude is the most famous biotechnologist in the world, those "problems" certainly didn't keep him back.
* <Freeman Dyson> proved the equivalence of the three existing versions of <quantum electrodynamics> theories that were around at his time, and he has always been proud of not having a <PhD>!

  \Video[http://youtube.com/watch?v=DzC1IRYN_Ps]
  {title=<Freeman Dyson> - Why I don't like the <PhD> system (95/157) by <Web of Stories> (2016)}
* <Ramanujan>, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Srinivasa_Ramanujan&oldid=1256886210#Early_life[Wikipedia]:
  > He received a scholarship to study at Government Arts College, Kumbakonam, but was so intent on mathematics that he could not focus on any other subjects and failed most of them, losing his scholarship in the process.
* Person that Ciro met personally and shall remain anonymous for now for his privacy: once Ciro was at a bar with work colleagues casually, it was cramped, and an older dude sat next to his group.

  The dude then started a conversation with Ciro, and soon he explained that he was a mathematician and software engineer.

  As a Mathematician, he had contributed to the <classification of finite simple groups>, and had a short Wiki page because of that.

  He never did a <PhD>, and said that <academia> was a waste of time, and that you can get as much done by working part time a decent job and doing your research part time, since you skip all the <bullshit> of academia like this.

  Yet, he was still invited by collaborating professors to give classes on his research subject in one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Students would call him Doctor X., and he would correct them: Mister X.

  As a software engineer, he had done a lot of hardcore assembly level optimizations for <x86> for some mathematical libraries related to his mathematics interests. He started talking microarchitecture with Ciro's colleagues.

  And he currently worked on an awesome open source project backed by a <company>.

  At last but not least, he said he also fathered 17 children by donating his sperm to <lesbian> mothers found on a local <gay> magazine, and that he had met most/all of those children after they were born.

  A God. Possibly the most remarkable person Ciro ever met, and his jaw was truly dropped.

<Gandhi> TODO source:
> You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind


Do one cool thing every day

I was initially thinking of pursuing a masters and then maybe a phd. And now after reading this article I'm having second thoughts \b[T_T].

Fuck you (\i[with all due respect]).

I hope this goes well.


 Score	# id	 Title	 Comments	 Created	 Updated
	cirosantilli/updates/post-ourbigbook-job-search-round-2025#1	Good Luck!	2	2025-05-08	2025-05-08
	cirosantilli/do-one-cool-thing-every-day#1	I hope this goes well	6	2024-03-03	2024-03-03

Hemant Bhandari @laughingclouds 0