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Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

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Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#331

Post by fouc »

newnewpdro wrote: post #154
rjplatte wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He thinks it's all cloud based. It's sad, yes. I honestly enjoy the work when I know what's going on. We have a lot of unique problems to solve, and I have gotten positive changes made, as well as some really good weeks where I pounded out some good code, but other times it's slow, sad, and frustrating.

Like others have suggested, use git locally, there's no need for them to be involved or aware of that detail. Do you consult them on what text editor to use? There's a skill to learn in keeping engineering concerns to yourself. It's unsurprising when management or executives are faced with decisions in unfamiliar topics they err on the side of Nay. Your mistake is involving them at all.

this ^

Using git locally is a tool just like your code editor. There's no need to ask your boss about that.

Since you're the only developer it's mainly to make it easy to revert any mistakes and to have confidence in deleting useless stuff (that you can recover later).

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#332

Post by [deleted] »

brucedawson wrote: post #270
whateveracct wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're that young (18??), you can almost definitely afford to quit tomorrow and look for something better. Never sacrifice your own career for your employer's success (within some time horizon.) Being willing to quit when your boss is a clear bad actor is a core part of this.

Quit. Period. Maybe find a new job first. But don't stick around.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#333

Post by Apocryphon »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #297
alexk wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that line cook is a very hard job and I have nothing but respect for all the workers out there facing daily harsh conditions. Having said that, I also understand that mental problems caused by stress at work, the abuse and pressure some intellectual workers face is as real and dangerous, however is less visible. That's why I think that people reading this should not underestimate those dangers and lo…

Honestly, I've done a lot of jobs, some manual, some not, went to university, all of it. Anything that pays well is easy compared to a job that pays shit. The possibility that a missed shift means missing rent and potentially being homeless is far more stressful than any amount of mental 'abuse' or physical strain.

> Anything that pays well is easy compared to a job that pays shit.

There are always exceptions to this rule:

https://time.com/4487297/high-paying-jobs-personality/

Edit- consider newly graduated investment bankers, medical residents, junior lawyers. There are some very well paying professions that operate under extremely stressful situations.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#334

Post by godelski »

hamiltont wrote: post #314
seizethecheese wrote: post #267

I sure hope this format doesn't take off. Having worked as a dishwasher, line cook, pool manager, business analyst, software engineer, and startup founder, I have to say software engineer was, by far, the most coddled job. How about this: I'm a line cook, and I can't afford to be fired. I make minimum wage, and burn or cut myself badly at least once per week. I'm not allowed to take the day off and have to work throu…

Contrasting point - I dislike the thought that folks who've "got it good" should just stay quiet and never complain because they are much better off than others. To me, this is immoral and ineffective. Everyone in a shitty position has a right to speak up. You're absolutely right that some people cannot exercise that right - they can't risk losing what they have. That is unfair to every single person in that situatio…

> Contrasting point - I dislike the thought that folks who've "got it good" should just stay quiet and never complain because they are much better off than others. To me, this is immoral and ineffective.

I like to say "Just because other people have it worse doesn't mean my problems aren't problems." I think the argument of "other people have it worse" is very dehumanizing. To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in that suffering (to provide a cliche). Can we just accept that problems are problems and they should be solved, even if trivial? I'm all for finding logistically which ones should be tackled first, but I don't think that commonly applies here.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#335

Post by ryanackley »

seizethecheese wrote: post #267

I sure hope this format doesn't take off. Having worked as a dishwasher, line cook, pool manager, business analyst, software engineer, and startup founder, I have to say software engineer was, by far, the most coddled job. How about this: I'm a line cook, and I can't afford to be fired. I make minimum wage, and burn or cut myself badly at least once per week. I'm not allowed to take the day off and have to work throu…

Most of us are adults, I don't see how staking out moral tentposts adds anything to this discussion. I was enjoying the stories from the community.

Nobody should feel guilty for being unhappy in their job and wanting to talk about. Trying to make someone feel guilty about it is the same kind of thing an abusive employer does to abused workers.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#336

Post by toop43 »

nexus2045 wrote: post #311
toop43 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sick of people in this industry making you feel you're not smart enough, that you're not enough no matter how many times you prove yourself in past work. Dealing with this in the heavy right now. I've built a lot in my 10 years as a programmer. Infinitely, and automatically scaled application server based on load. Hasn't crashed or had a single downtime ever since release. I've built mobile applications 100% myself…

I’m currently prepping for these kind of questions and “online assessments” as well. I have accepted that my worth as a developer is in most part going to be dictated by how diligently I can game this glorified IQ test. There are common patterns to these questions and I’ve found that they get more predictable after having done 50-100 of them, with very careful attentiveness to what your mind is coming up with to solv…

So I recently switched up my approach on leetcode.com to optimize for this naturally.

What I was doing initially was:

I sorted their entire problems database for the most frequently asked questions. Started at the top, and worked my way down.

The problem with this method is that each question can be quite different from the last. Your first question might be an arrays / sliding-window question. The next is a dynamic programming problem. The next stacks. After that, union-find / connected components.

The point is each problem would end up sufficiently different from the previous one that in a given day, or over the course of a few days, you weren't practicing the same (or roughly the same) type of problem.

So as of literally TODAY I've changed my approach to sort the list by TYPE of problem. I will then focus on a specific type (per their categorization) for ~X number of problems (to be determined).

The hope is that by sticking to a specific category of problems, I'll be able to actually learn the commonalities within those problem sets.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#338

Post by toop43 »

lstamour wrote: post #155
toop43 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sick of people in this industry making you feel you're not smart enough, that you're not enough no matter how many times you prove yourself in past work. Dealing with this in the heavy right now. I've built a lot in my 10 years as a programmer. Infinitely, and automatically scaled application server based on load. Hasn't crashed or had a single downtime ever since release. I've built mobile applications 100% myself…

I’d recommend trying the graded exercises in https://www.coursera.org/specializations/data-structures-alg... or https://www.edx.org/course/data-structures-an-active-learnin... — unfortunately, for the most benefit (online automatic grading), you’ll have to pay either EdX or Coursera, but EdX offers a small sample of exercises to start, if I recall correctly. And there are a few more courses after those. If you’re any…

I'm taking the princeton algorithms 1 course now, and it is proving helpful. It has automatic online grading and is free.

The only gripe I have is that at the end of the day, the litmus test for whether or not I'll pass an interview really is leetcode.com

While the coursera course is great, and provides fundamentals I'm clearly lacking ... It's tangential to the actual solving of these riddles.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#339

Post by snypox »

hnick wrote: post #90
shifto wrote: post #6

The company I work for is active in an industry I have zero relation to. I can't relate to the business at all and I'm working with ancient tech. It pays well though and was brought on board by a friend and I don't want to disappoint him by leaving after just 1 year.

1 year is pretty much the modern standard for the minimum appropriate time before moving on in my experience, so I think it's fine.

Yeah I thought the OP will finish his sentence “after about 1 week”. 1 year is decent in IT.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#340

Post by satvikpendem »

ziroshima wrote: post #243
unnouinceput wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did. 11.5 years ago before starting as freelancer and never looking back.

Freelancing sounds like fun, but it looks like a real pain getting started. From what I can tell, it means working for free or next to it on sites like upwork. Any tips or suggestions?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JfNAbUX_lN9K3MCNHO15...
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