261–270 of 332 posts
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I love how HN sometimes behaves as if the entire world is one or two small corners of the US.
If you graduate from any top 10 school in the US — which plenty of people do — it is indeed a pretty typical offer Love how I’m downvoted for pointing out a fact. I mean, for fuck’s sake, look at levels.fyi. And look at how many people FAANG and FAANG-adjacent startups hire every year. It’s really not that rare. But hey, stay in denial.
When I was interviewing developers from a very large offshoring firm, they covertly had an account manager listening in to take down the questions for future candidates. Each interview, I'd ask a slightly different variation and it became obvious what was going on when a candidate gave a textbook answer to the question I'd asked the previous candidate, including references to tables I hadn't mentioned and that had no…
What was that "something," if you don't mind me asking?
I've been involved in hiring decisions on teams I've been part of for a long time now. Blatant plagiarism, obvious embellishments and more subtle BS is literally part of the game unfortunately. This is particularly prevalent when dealing with (almost) any consultancy, large and small. I will not specifically call out names, but the some of the largest and most well known consultancies do this as a matter of practice…
Infosys, TCS & Accenture comes up immediately to my mind.
There are hardworking people in these companies no doubt. Many times it gives an opportunity to the less fortunate as well. In general, however their workforces are poorly trained & business practices borderline unethical (The good ones quickly leave). These companies pay peanuts to their employees, and most of the latter are sticking for the promise of an onsite deployment. There are horrid tales of client having to lock horns with the TCS/Infosys service manager to get the contracted job done.
Case in point: managers at a Japanese giant are shaking their head in frustration since they are locked-in to a Infosys contract. No way they can shake them off due to poor project documentation & shaky installations which require heavy service & maintenance. Choosing an alternative would bring in a tidal wave of expenses, so keeping the status quo. It is deeply unfortunate that they bill their clients higher for the same shoddy work culture as the number of years roll-by. I assume this will continue as long as the cost of renegotiated contracts are lesser than switching to a different firm, or the tech stack is rewritten for a newer project.
I feel like I read this exact story on HN a few months ago...
Once a company sponsors an employee for a Green Card application, it has every incentive in the world to exploit and mistreat the employee. And many companies routinely act on the incentives.
It's unfortunate that a lot of the mass focus is on illegal immigrants, who have less of a legal standing and moral case than those who have followed the laws of their host country to the letter, but still find themselves treated like dirt. This is one of the unfortunate byproducts of electoral politics and representative democracy: sometimes, there are groups that are unlikely to matter electorally given their numbers, and their concerns are always given short shrift no matter how legitimate.
Of course, the H-1B system itself has done enormous damage to the industry by enabling companies such as IBM to mass fire entire cohorts of older people. As usual, efforts at reform have been fitful, uneven, and have been subject to the vagaries of the political winds.
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Thank you for sharing and I think your opinion is certainly valid and it would create more trust if everyone shares your principles. I was just trying to convey this idea that they are there because they serve a need. If we want to imagine a world without these practices, we should probably start by tackling the system itself, not by attacking the surface level actors only.
I wish the world would've been that charitable to me. Instead, had I failed I'd be a +1 on another DOD statistic. I wouldn't have even registered in turnover for most software companies. Nobody would've missed the SWE without a degree beyond my friends. There are few, if any, DEI dashboards that would've tracked a SWE without a degree or an enlisted veteran. On one hand, I hate that people seek accountability so much…
I, for instance, paid my way through 3 years of college using the GI bill, and the monthly allowance I got paid for my apartment and food and etc. for the whole 3 years. I had to go during summers, too, to get the allowance, but I finished a whole math degree during that time. I also got medical coverage from the VA during that time, though that might have been because I'm a certain percentage disabled veteran (I am not sure if VA healthcare is included with the GI bill?).
Maybe now you're all set and don't need it, but I find it alarming how many veterans never use the benefits they earned in their service.
This is another reason that, while I understand people’s complaints, I still believe CS interviews should include algorithmic and whiteboard tests. I know they may seem “outdated” or “irrelevant” to some, and yes, it is very unlikely that you will need to implement Dijkstra’s algorithm by hand without any reference, but it is more that it shows a general competence in computing which will transfer to other, more rele…
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I like how the person above can also say the following. > Why is it nonsense? The wealthy and connected can already give their progeny undue access to opportunities via their social networks, and can afford the best education that money can buy. That's already way more of an advantage than the average citizen gets. Besides, the whole point is to maximize equality of opportunity. For computers, not everyone can afford…
Exactly, and not everyone knows to go do this stuff. It's like this NPR piece on why there are so many sprinters in Jamaica. https://www.npr.org/2012/05/04/151956595/a-need-for-speed-in... Spoiler - it's because it's seen by kids. If a kid in Jamaica wants to be a runner it's obvious to them what to do. Its being told to them every day in their sports entertainment, local events, advertising, etc. It a kid in Jamaica…
The book « The Sports Gene » discusses that the West African heritage of Jamacians actually gives them a genetic advantage. I forget the details but basically, to resist malaria they have sickle cell anemia which leads to powerful anaerobic systems ideal for sprinting.
You could put someone of different genetic stock in the same culture bit they wouldn’t be as successful at sprinting.
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Yeah but this is less than 1/10 of 1% of the number of people that graduate every year. By the same logic you could say that everyone has trust funds, because most of the people in this small slice have them. Just because something applies to the top 0.1% of the US doesn't mean it applies to the rest of the 99.9%. This is the problem with wealth and opportunity disparity in this country. The haves think that the have…
Georgia Tech is consistently ranked a Top 10 CS program (worldwide) and their OMSCS program now accounts for 10% of all MSCS degrees issued. It costs about 6,000 to 7,000 USD total: "OMSCS started in January 2014 with 380 students. Enrollment increased each semester (excluding summer terms). In 2019 I believed that we were very close to the peak, since we are graduating more and more students. But then, the pandemic…