u/matt_around_5

So I have this old Dell XPS that I used during my undergrad years. It is still a solid machine with a decent GPU and I kept it in near perfect condition because I am obsessive about my gear. My younger cousin started his freshman year this semester and his parents were complaining about how they could not afford a new MacBook for him. Being the nice guy I offered to lend him my Dell for the year until he could save up some cash from a part time job. I told him explicitly that this is not a gift and I want it back in one piece because I still use it as a backup for my server environment.

Last weekend I was scrolling through some mutual friends stories and I see a video of my cousin playing some competitive shooter. He clearly lost a match because he starts screaming and then he literally kicks the laptop off his desk onto the carpet. The video ends with him laughing about his "gamer rage" while the screen is flickering in the background. I was absolutely livid. That machine survived four years of engineering school without a scratch and he is treating it like a piece of junk because he did not pay for it.

I drove over to his dorm the next morning without calling first. I told him I saw the video and I wanted the laptop back right then. He tried to claim it was a joke and that the laptop is totally fine but when he opened it there is a clear scuff on the chassis and the hinge feels loose now. I just grabbed the power brick and left while he was calling me a dramatic prick.

Now my aunt and uncle are blowing up my phone saying I am sabotaging his education over a "little accident." They keep saying that since it is an old laptop anyway I should just let it go and that he needs it for his midterms. They think I am being an elitist tech snob because I can afford a newer model and he cannot. My mom is even chiming in saying I should have just given him a warning instead of embarrassing him in front of his roommates. I feel like if you respect someone you respect their property regardless of how much money they have. Am I really the asshole for not wanting my stuff destroyed by a kid with no self control?

I spent the last decade building my way up the stack, dealing with legacy migrations and scaling systems that actually matter. When I saw a Senior Software Engineer posting for a mid-sized fintech firm, it looked solid. The tech stack matched, the benefits seemed okay, and the initial screening was standard. But as soon as I got into the deep technical rounds, things started feeling off. They werent asking about design patterns or specific backend optimizations. Instead, they were grilling me on how I would restructure their entire engineering department and manage a budget for infrastructure scaling over the next three years.

I figured maybe they just wanted to see if I had "big picture" thinking. Nope. During the final round with the VP of Engineering, I asked for more details about the team structure. He straight up told me that since they are lean, this "Senior" role actually involves overseeing three junior squads, handling all the cloud architecture decisions, and basically acting as the point person for all technical strategy. When I brought up that this sounds a lot like a Director or at least a Lead Architect role, he just shrugged and said they like people who "wear many hats" and that the title of Senior Dev is more respected in their current hierarchy.

The kicker was the compensation talk. The range they offered was exactly what a standard Senior Dev makes in this city. No equity worth mentioning and definitely no executive bonuses. They are basically looking for someone to run their entire technical operation while paying them like an individual contributor. It is such a blatant move to save money on leadership by slapping a lower title on a high stakes job. I asked if there was room to adjust the title to reflect the actual workload and he told me I should be more focused on the impact I can make rather than what it says on my LinkedIn profile.

It is honestly exhausting out here. You spend years specializing just to have companies try and trick you into doing two jobs for the price of one. I ended the process right there because I know exactly how this ends. You take the job, you get buried under management overhead, and you never touch code again while getting blamed for every missed deadline across three teams. I guess I am back to square one with the job hunt. It feels like every second company is trying this "title inflation" or "responsibility creep" nonsense lately just to see who is desperate enough to bite .

I think I am just going to take a week off from looking at LinkedIn before I lose my mind completely .