Viewing profile — michaelochurch

Welcome to Haskell. No, seriously. We allow side effects. We have the STM monad, the ST (single-threaded) monad, and the IO monad if you really want to go wild. And almost no one s…

I don't know why the fuck you were down-voted. That said, age is only a small part of the issue. I'm older and there's still a lot more that I don't know than there is that I do kn…

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Except that the junior engineer's old company won't sue because he is just a junior engineer... True in practice, but there is risk. Plus, it's just a shitty conversation to be com…

Non-competes aren't there to be enforced, but to make the person stinky to future employers. A decent company will cover legal expenses and, in the extreme outlier case, judgments-…

I'd love to hear Giles Bowkett do another dramatic reading, for this essay. The first one was an instant classic: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2015/06/let-other-95-of-rea...

There is... certainly a learning curve. The Haskell community is still tiny. Per capita, it's one of the best language communities out there. It just hasn't had the thousands or mi…

The 'thinking about money' is not at all the same as we in industry think. Its about survival on a shoestring, not about making it big. Absolutely correct. It also begets the False…

I agree with your assessment of academia, but I don't think "startups", as HN defines the term, will improve anything. Academia's one imploded guild system, but venture capital is …

This is an interesting perspective. I didn't intend to "frame the academics as the bad guys" but I can see how it came off that way. To be blunt, I don't think that the current gen…

I think the selectivity problem is less of one for programmers than screen actors. We can use code tests or Github for membership screening. Thus, we don't create the chicken-egg p…

Academia is a horrible industry and it's really just CTD (circling the drain) at this point. It's sad, because basic research is important and right now, there's far too little of …

The false assumption is that you need to have 100 people under you to be a Director. It's a title, not an organizational role. Managers benefit from a seniority system at places li…

I don't think a manager does either - Google will be dead before they can climb the hierarchy. You think so? Why do you think Google will be dead in the next few years? I'd bet on …

There were Senior Staff SWEs at Google NYC when I was there. It's not surprising that there's a Principal SWE now. You're talking about anecdotes with regard to those highly-compen…

FYI, SAG does set minimum compensation, working conditions, meal requirements, etc. It doesn't set upper bounds or demand that more senior people get the better jobs. Sounds like w…

Engineers, speaking generally, are more than happy to work with the business. Where there's divergence is that engineers don't want to work for the business as a subordinate , or f…

Well, if nothing else works, a programmer's union. I'd prefer something more like the Screen Actor's Guild, which provides support (legal assistance if you need it, access to talen…

Worth noting is that it's not just about titles. Titles matter, but they can also become a joke. It's easy to imagine a company, realizing that its best seniors are underpaid, inve…

The "parallel" technical career path never seems to deliver equal amounts of power, or even money, as compared to managers on the same level. Very true. Engineering is the hard way…

Until engineering decides to do something about it, engineering will always be subordinate to management. There are no true parallel career paths. You nailed it. That is all. If we…

Do you really think that by "baller" he meant "basketball player" and not the colloquial, IBD, meaning?

I have to commend Michael Stevens (VSauce) for the courage to take on Banach-Tarski at all. I was surprised that someone could make it that accessible inside of 20 minutes. I do ag…

I have been there. There are three options here: Option A: get the fuck out. Option B: get the fuck out. Option C: get the fuck out. Your boss is a jerk and doesn't pay on time. He…