381–390 of 491 posts
Now, six years on, I am all "ugh recruiters spamming me" like my peers, but I remember how awesome it felt when I woke up to an inbox full of emails after posting my graduate resume.
Emotionally detaching. I was a workaholic from age 16 until 33 and this was my primary identity. I used to always be proud of the work I did, no matter how lame the company or how many times I was screwed over. Then one day my father died, and I was fired from a company who I truly believed in and for whom I had sacrificed. This sounds cynical, but it's really peaceful. With the emotional energy and sheer time saved…
Emotionally detaching. I was a workaholic from age 16 until 33 and this was my primary identity. I used to always be proud of the work I did, no matter how lame the company or how many times I was screwed over. Then one day my father died, and I was fired from a company who I truly believed in and for whom I had sacrificed. This sounds cynical, but it's really peaceful. With the emotional energy and sheer time saved…
I wish this could be easier.
Moving from permanent to contractor. I made the jump 5 years ago and have worked for a number of companies since, on 6-12 month contracts. The money has jumped each time, such that I’m on what I consider to be silly money now for the job I do — Ireland, not US. The work is always interesting for at least 6 months and I learn a ton of new stuff with every contract, much of which I use when building my own products (Do…
I concur. Consulting works for some people. Myself included. Two years ago, I went one step further and moved from SF Bay area to Saigon, Vietnam. I've had a variety of tech jobs while here, but I am currently consulting for two primarily US based companies. My expenses are almost nil (compared with before) and I live a very minimal lifestyle (own and purchase very little). I plan on going nomadic in the next couple…
However, I do regret not having spent more time with my parents and my sister. I haven't been back for the first 3 years or so, but I've changed my attitude quite a bit, and try to visit them at least twice a year now. I've also paid my sister's vacation in Hong Kong, so she could come for a visit(she's still a student).
Emotionally detaching. I was a workaholic from age 16 until 33 and this was my primary identity. I used to always be proud of the work I did, no matter how lame the company or how many times I was screwed over. Then one day my father died, and I was fired from a company who I truly believed in and for whom I had sacrificed. This sounds cynical, but it's really peaceful. With the emotional energy and sheer time saved…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> because I realized Ruby wasn't ideal for teaching novice programmers Care to elaborate? I work with both of them lately, consider me a novice programmer since I rarely write anything complex, but which part of ruby is not ideal for teaching? I find the ruby syntax much more self-explanatory than python. An example: recently, I had to use private methods in a python project. I went for the _method() convention, but…
I find the ruby syntax much more self-explanatory than python. Yes and no. Consider that these are different in Ruby but the same in almost every other language: f(x) f (x) Ever had to debug code that relied on this behaviour? Or had to explain why exactly to someone unfamiliar with yacc?
I love the elegance possible in Ruby syntax, but it allows for way too much ambiguity, and if you don't understand how parsing/interpreters fundamentally work, it will seem like Ruby is as loose and permissable as regular English syntax, which is a huge stumbling block for people entirely new to programming. I admit to slamming my fist on my desk the first time I tried writing Python only to get an indentation error, but Python's explicitness is incredibly helpful in making clear the exactness needed for computation.
And Python's design helps prevent many of the kinds of catastrophic/difficult to debug errors that do not throw exceptions in Ruby. For example, the following situations are acceptable in Ruby, but in Python, will raise errors:
if x = 9
puts x + 1 # prints 10, because x is assigned to 9 first
y = {}
z = y["this doesn't exist"] # z is set to nilLearning Python! (in 2003) It led to a lot of learning and a lot of opportunities. I often wonder what language is the "new Python", or if that question even makes sense in 2018. Related: http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html
I was driving 30+ minutes to work, working overtime every week, and got a bad performance review on the grounds that I wasn't working enough. The company had a "work hard, play hard" culture, which in practice meant "work all the time and occasionally we'll invite you to take a booze-filled trip without your family". They had flown me in for the interview and let me eat sushi with the CEO, but after that it was "nose to the grindstone".
After a few months I got a call from a recruiter about a job 5 minutes from my house, using a language I liked more. In talking with the company I learned that they worked business hours only. I felt slightly guilty about making the switch, but I got a lot less stress, more learning, and more respect at work out of the deal.
In the nearly-a-decade since then, I've never again been told I don't work enough, and have always ruled out jobs that smelled of workaholism. I'm having a happy career.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Taking a chance and joining a very large corporation. I have two questions if you don't mind answering. How large is the company you are referring to? 10K people? 100K, 250K, 500K? What type of company is it? A company that builds and sells mostly software, or a company that uses software to sell something else (e.g. automobiles?). Amazon+AWS is a an example that is a hybrid of both.
Its a mega corp in terms that it is comprised of several large enterprises. If the "arm" I worked in was spun off as its own corporation it would be Fortune 30 by revenue. Worldwide I think we have about 40k of the 270+k total employees in the corp group. The group as a whole is in the Fortune 10 and serves the health care industry. My part of the corp is all software. Product development both "commercial enterprise"…