Membership fee to the University Student Computer Association. I got exposed to UNIX (BSD 4.3 Reno) and the Internet as the first HTTP servers went up (the good stuff was still only on Gopher and FTP). I wasn't studying Computer Science or anything close, but I learned so much that I can look back on almost 25 years in IT.
Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
501–510 of 553 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Telling Eric Schmidt (while at Google) to "go fuck yourself" and walk out the door to never return was the most empowering thing I have ever done. > My career has been much more rewarding since. That sounds like an interesting story. Any more details?
I'm guessing he/she had a good amount of "fuck you money" ! ;)
I am sure that explains the ability to do so, but not the motivation or proximate cause.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it possible for you, without sharing personal details that you would rather not share, to give a more concrete and detailed account of the value that your therapist has provided to you? I've also always regarded myself as introspective enough not to be able to benefit from therapy. And, while I'm open minded to the idea that I am wrong about that, I just have trouble imagining or envisioning what I might be missin…
Imagine you've lived in the same house your entire life. There's a big couch taking up half the living room, but one of the legs is broken. When you were really little, it tipped over when you sat in it, so you just learned to walk around the couch over to the not-very-comfortable armchair and sit there instead. This was so long ago that you don't even remember learning not to sit in the couch. You don't think about…
Leave it to munificent to explain things clearly. Every time :-)
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#504Earlier quoted context omitted.
I keep hearing "they make money on financing" but I don't see how that's possible. I've bought three new cars financed, and every time the finance person puts my info in and gets finance "offers" from 4-5 big banks plus their in-house financing, and just lets me pick the one with the best rate -- usually most of the finance offers are under 5%, with the best one being under 1%. One time I went to one of the offering…
Hi! I work in auto finance. About my company: we finance in the USA and we focus in "sub prime" (aka bad credit), but we are a "full spectrum" lender. Dealerships TOTALLY make money on the financing. In your example, it might be $1000 - it sounds like you have pretty good credit, and the margins are thin there. You should remember that if someone is leaning YOU money, they just want a reliable investment for their po…
Thanks for the info, I appreciate the insider perspective.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do “woke politics” prevent you from doing your job well?
How familiar are you with the term? Perhaps I used an offensive slur for convenience and should reconsider the phrasing? In my experience, over-emphasizing "social responsibility" that has nothing to do with the product tends to put less competent managers in power. Less competent managers tend to favor less competent engineers. And it's a vicious cycle.
I do know the term — I’d define it as generally being aware of the historical struggles that various groups have gone through and realizing how that impacts them today.
It feels like you’re dancing around your word choice and I’m having trouble understanding exactly what you’re saying, especially as how being aware of power struggles impacts your ability to presumably software engineer well. They seem pretty orthogonal to me.
When you say “social responsibility” putting “less competent managers in power,” are you referring to affirmative action? Or something else here?
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#506Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the thing that used to be called Safari, right? This is great, but a tad expensive at $50/month. I wish O'Reilly would just charge a bit less for that.
Get an ACM Memebership instead, it's significantly less expensive. Among other things, it gives you access to O'Reilly Online.
Thanks!
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#507If your budget is a few hundred, an IntelliJ Ultimate license. For me it's a force multiplier. Built-in highlights of things that can be improved (e.g. linting) is a bonus. In the end, things like VS Code are just text editors. I mean, you can't get a warning that the `[]` syntax isn't available in your old codebase's flavor of PHP (5.2) in VS Code. I think. Alternatively: Take time off. If you have enough money to l…
I spent some time with vscode to install all the correct extensions properly. And for me back is currently on par with Jetbrains tooling, with the added benefit that vscode is faster.
Can you share your setup? I love VS Code and it would be great to optimize my workflow.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not OP but I am politically engaged with not 100% the same opinions, so sometimes I get annoyed by the environment and have to remind myself not to care. Imagine your workspace was full of aggressive pro-Trump messaging. A bit distracting maybe?
Sorry I didn’t see the username change. But I don’t understand how a workspace that was full of any kind of aggressive messaging is healthy even if I agree with it? That sounds pretty toxic to begin with.
It's especially frustrating if you generally agree with the goals but think the aggressive messaging is a bad look.
Any constructive feedback is generally received as "this person must be a closet white supremacist". Better to grit your teeth and remain silent.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
How familiar are you with the term? Perhaps I used an offensive slur for convenience and should reconsider the phrasing? In my experience, over-emphasizing "social responsibility" that has nothing to do with the product tends to put less competent managers in power. Less competent managers tend to favor less competent engineers. And it's a vicious cycle.
I do know the term — I’d define it as generally being aware of the historical struggles that various groups have gone through and realizing how that impacts them today. It feels like you’re dancing around your word choice and I’m having trouble understanding exactly what you’re saying, especially as how being aware of power struggles impacts your ability to presumably software engineer well. They seem pretty orthogon…
Affirmative action is about policy and the law. I was referring to a newer trend wherein middle management assumes the role of thought police and decides for others how well educated they are in "historical struggles that various groups have gone through and realizing how that impacts them today."
BTW I absolutely appreciate your concern for fairness, and encourage you to read up about the history of corporate governance and the financial scandals that arise when lawlessness infiltrates management.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#510Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do know the term — I’d define it as generally being aware of the historical struggles that various groups have gone through and realizing how that impacts them today. It feels like you’re dancing around your word choice and I’m having trouble understanding exactly what you’re saying, especially as how being aware of power struggles impacts your ability to presumably software engineer well. They seem pretty orthogon…
Affirmative action is about policy and the law. I was referring to a newer trend wherein middle management assumes the role of thought police and decides for others how well educated they are in "historical struggles that various groups have gone through and realizing how that impacts them today." BTW I absolutely appreciate your concern for fairness, and encourage you to read up about the history of corporate govern…
I’m sorry to keep coming back for more info, but can you please give a concrete example of this and how it prevents you from being able to do your job well? I haven’t experienced middle management thought police so I’m curious what your experience is here.
In terms of financial scales and lawlessness infiltrating management — are you talking about things like Enron? How this is connected to “woke politics” I can’t figure out.