I disagree. Diversity is about hiring people based purely on merit, rather than letting prejudices about gender/age/race taint the hiring process. Nobody's suggesting that we hire under-qualified women/elders/blacks, but they are saying the merely being such is not an indication of inferior ability or lack of "culture fit."
> Nobody's suggesting that we hire under-qualified women/elders/blacks How else are you supposed to meet arbitrary diversity quotas, when the pool of applicants is overwhelmingly white and male ?
But it isn't - unless you are counting Asians and Jews as "white".
Bang on. Discrimination by sex is not socially acceptable. Discrimination by other protected factors is sometimes socially ok. (not that it should be). Edit to add: At a former company i became a bit of an outsider when I noted at a diversity meeting that diversity meant more than the big 3 that tend to get pushed around Gender, Orientation, Race. I noted that our office was young, had no parents, no ex convicts, no…
From what you described, to an observer it would have sounded like you were arguing with them against the whole concept of protected classes, rather than pointing out that they should add ageism (etc.) to the list of things to be wary of. Usually when people point out hypocrisy, people assume that they're making an indirect argument against the thing they're being accused of being hypocrites about. If you say somethi…
Often times you have no control over the technology stack you use because other factors drive your choices. I'm stuck developing in PHP because the tool we are using is written in PHP.
You often have to learn this stuff outside of your regular job. Once you know another stack then you can find another job using it. That's how you exert control over your career. Tying yourself to one company (or stack) is a slow death sentence. EDIT: to those downvoting this... Do you disagree with me (i.e. you think it's a good career decision to stick with a single tech stack) or do you agree but dislike that it h…
You're being downvoted because you are arguing the details and have missed the wider point being made.
"Michael Peredo, a 55-year-old auto engineer dismissed from Mercedes-Benz in February 2015, says he had trouble giving up his bow ties for T-shirts, as some he met at ProMatch suggested. ‘I feel like myself wearing them,’ he says." Yeah, you're going to have a really hard time getting a programming job in Silicon Valley if you show up in looking like a security guard in a tie, let alone looking like a waiter in a bow…
our meritocratic hacker values place no value on surface appearances
Geeks care FAR more that you conform to their "hoodie and jeans" dresscode than managers care that you wear a tie.
"... you can work in the Bay Area and then retire somewhere cheaper" Yes but, while working in the Bay Area you have to live in the Bay Area (assuming you aren't remote). I'm just super curious how we're supposed to save enough to be safe by 40.
* Forego apartments and scour craigslist for cheap rooms in shared housing. This will cut rent by 2/3. Look in less desirable (not dangerous, just not primo) neighborhoods, though sometimes deals can be found in primo locales too. Don't buy a house until you need one; some claim it's an investment, but really they're just money pits. * Don't spend more than about 8K on a car. Drive it till it dies. (I drove a $2140 1…
Often times you have no control over the technology stack you use because other factors drive your choices. I'm stuck developing in PHP because the tool we are using is written in PHP.
You often have to learn this stuff outside of your regular job. Once you know another stack then you can find another job using it. That's how you exert control over your career. Tying yourself to one company (or stack) is a slow death sentence. EDIT: to those downvoting this... Do you disagree with me (i.e. you think it's a good career decision to stick with a single tech stack) or do you agree but dislike that it h…
I live and work outside the valley, and I know python and Java, dabbled in scala, rust and lately C# -- no one out here will give me a job on any of those languages because I have no professional experience with them, and some of them no one here is using yet
Is the potshot on jQuery and PHP really necessary? I know enough people where I live making six figures (low COL city) with PHP, SQL and jQuery that I don't think they're ready to sunset.
The potshot was aimed at Winforms, actually, not SQL.
The sentiment often echoed on HN usually includes relational DBs that aren't postgres, but you are right, he didn't explicitly call out SQL, I included it because that's the usual skillset the devs I was talking about have
This sort of remark reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFWeoxrhbE8 (or perhaps https://youtu.be/ZjibEkDoXQc?t=19 ) It doesn't add much value to the conversation and whether some tech is really a rehash or not rarely matters. It also makes you sound cynical.
It does matter if you're aware of the cost:benefit ratio involved in adopting it relative to the existing tech, or even more commonly, the cost:benefit ratio involved in adopting it relative to adapting or modifying existing tech. Maybe as an employee, it might not be the right thing to be pushing with an employer enamored of the new tech, but as an objective onlooker, it very well may be. There's plenty of amazing i…
Sure, experience matters and some technologies get over-hyped. I was referring to the more specific case of dismissing a technology solely because it is a rehash or has failed in the past. For example, dismissing Docker because of LXC or FreeBSD jails. Or dismissing Node.js because it uses cooperative multitasking. Or dismissing SaaS because the "thin client model was tried and failed" (yes, just a decade ago, SaaS was considered over-hyped).