Viewing profile — danieltillett

Do you have a professional background in biotech or at least the life sciences?

Or pay people less to do the pleasant jobs.

How did you end up on this team?

As an employer I always read the cover letters. You had better have a slight clue of what job you are applying for or your application ends up in the garbage.

A meta question on the WSJ headline - do American really use the plural for linen to refer to sheets, etc?

The E in AAVE is English not Language.

This is a seperate (important) issue.

The reason why is it is easier to train a biologist to become a programmer than it is to train a programmer to become a biologist. Sure the quality of biologist-turned-programmer c…

How about which jail cell you are placed in if arrested?

This is why you should not ever dedicate yourself to a single project no matter how much you believe in it. You should at a minimum have one back up project that will generate publ…

Sometimes the company has no choice as the alternative is everyone loses their job. I don’t think employees should think of the company as their family, but don’t get into the mind…

Yes, but it is not quite so clean. Employers are humans and in my experience they care far more about the people they know (employees) than abstract people (shareholders).

Many employers agonise over laying off employees, I would go so far as to say the vast majority do. Many employers try to keep on employees in situations where they really should b…

When someone’s future salary is tied to acquiring $new/$shiny skill then you are going to get this sort of rational behaviour from the engineers. Smart people respond to incentives…

I think you should get out and see what farmers are doing to the wild mice.

Something I have always found insane is all the regulations and paperwork hurdles around killing mice in labs. Want to kill 10 mice humanely in a lab then you need to fill out a 60…

It is not. One side is winning the long war and it is not the USA.

I used to be a non-technical manager “managing” a team of developers. I later (through circumstances) became a developer. Looking back at the games my team played with me I can see…

As a manager what every report wants is to be genuinely listened to by their manager. If you make the effort to really listen to what your report has to say you don’t need to worry…

Yes they are likely to be mirror twins [0]. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin#Semi-identical_twins

I assume you know about mirror twins [0]. Do you and your sibling happen to have opposite dominant hands? 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin#Semi-identical_twins

It certainly is counterproductive. We should be incentivising replication, not novelty. If you started giving out grants aimed at replicating results we would speed up scientific p…

That is not what meritocracy is - it is rule by the cognitive gifted. The argument for meritocracy is that meritocratic societies (and by extension businesses) kick the butts of al…

I wasn’t suggesting reneging on the deal, just laying out the options and letting him choose. You could consider winding up the company and starting again with a fresh company.

Fire them and then give everyone a raise with their salary.