Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Does your office have a library?

jonpauluritis.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 165 posts

Re: Does your office have a library?

#61

Post by fleddr »

feoren wrote: post #13

Several of these questions are hinting at whether your company culture is overly stratified or not: e.g., do seniors ever ask juniors for help. I can sense the author has worked in places where he wished he asked those questions sooner, and I think they're good questions to be asking of a company. A couple of them highlighted, at least for me, how lonely it is to be one of the very few competent software developers i…

Your hysteric response isn't any less bizarre. Not every question has to have a profound meaning or be personally relevant.

For example, you consider even entertaining the possibility of hiring the wife of a top performer bizarre, based on your explicit opinion that this is a terrible idea. That doesn't mean the question is bizarre. It's a normal ethical question to which you have a clear answer. What's the problem?

Re: Does your office have a library?

#63

Post by fleddr »

ixtli wrote: post #30

Some of these really speak to me, but others, like the conflation of “diversity” with modern American political conservatism, are frustrating.

That means its an ethically sound question, so you're clearly not getting the point of these questions.

Re: Does your office have a library?

#64

Post by tomlockwood »

Notorious_BLT wrote: post #16
bee_rider wrote: post #5

It is an interesting list, some of the questions seem good, I like the ones that basically get at “are you learning from experienced employees.” On the other hand, > Does your company care about diversity? If so are they hiring conservatives, the religious, or people with unrelated degrees? Hell are they hiring people without degrees or from places with no major metro around? This seems like kind of an annoying polit…

The questions are meant to be asked of yourself, unless I'm mistaken. So I'm not really sure what you mean about "the person who asked it". I would speculate that the point of the question is that "diversity", in the corporate world, has some very specific meaning, and in my experience, it doesn't include these categories. My own employer does a lot of lip service to how important it is to have people from diverse ba…

Part of that is a reflection of the American population! America is increasingly ethnically diverse and irreligious.

Re: Does your office have a library?

#65

Post by munificent »

feoren wrote: post #13

Several of these questions are hinting at whether your company culture is overly stratified or not: e.g., do seniors ever ask juniors for help. I can sense the author has worked in places where he wished he asked those questions sooner, and I think they're good questions to be asking of a company. A couple of them highlighted, at least for me, how lonely it is to be one of the very few competent software developers i…

I found the Internet got a lot more valuable for me when I decided to deliberately take the most charitable interpretation of what I read.

> > If someone is really really good would you hire their wife? How about their friends?

> What!? Why on Earth would you ever even entertain the possibility of institutionalized nepotism?

It's a thought experiment. You likely spend the majority of your waking day at work. It seems like if you're trying to optimize your total quality of life, it would be great to have that time also include some of your close friends or partners.

Now, if you're trying to entice a particular person to work at your company, is this a perk you would put on the table? Probably not. But I find it interesting to consider what ideas are just unthinkable (as in we don't even think to think it, not that we morally object to thinking it) because of a deeply ingrained notion of work/life separation.

My father and his wife own a business together. That experience is clearly profoundly valuable to both of them. Perhaps the nepotism makes this a negative experience for some of their own employees. But maybe not. There are plenty of other famous examples of partners working together. Should we deny people like my dad and stepmom even the possibility of this kind of life? What do we lose by having a black and white approach to nepotism?

> Why do friendship and professional life have to overlap at all?

Because the minutes of our life are finite. If we can spend some of those minutes at work and with close friends, we've enriched our lives and increased the number of experiences we can put in it.

Why do we assume that we should spend most of our waking lives with people we don't particularly care about? That goes against the way humans have lived for almost the entirety of our evolutionary history.

> This is a childish, black-and-white, lazy take, and it has no place in the professional world. You should not have "enemies" at work.

The article isn't clear about this, but it's not necessary to strictly interpret all of these questions about the workplace.

> On the other hand, there are people literally advocating for genocide in the world.

Do any of those people know what you oppose them? You aren't their enemy if they don't know who you are.

Should they? What does it say about the causes you support if the people directly opposed to them don't even know you exist? Should they at least know about groups you support that oppose them?

Re: Does your office have a library?

#66

Post by neilv »

jedberg wrote: post #52

Lots of good questions in this, but to answer the question in the title: When I started working corporate in 1999, every engineer had their own library of tech books. We would all share books with each other. You could tell how senior someone was by how big their book collection was. At once point, one of our senior people got laid off. Since the books were bought by the company he had to leave them all behind. Us ju…

I carried around an impressive software engineering personal library, through various jobs and grad school. And it had a few benefits.

Even when I was poor and sleeping on the floor because I didn't own furniture, and didn't have health insurance, I'd still buy books (and cheap lunches with the team). I'd also print out a lot of tech docs from the Internet, and put them in discarded binders that I labeled neatly.

In addition to what I learned from the books and could reference from my library, there might've also been a signaling benefit. Early in my career, I was a kid with no degree, working as an intern at a hardcore software&hardware engineering company. I suspect that, on occasion, the impressive library signaled to people coming by my work space that at least I had interest/ambition/hustle (or maybe just presumptuousness).

Nowadays, the tech industry has way too much signaling, posturing, and self-promoting. But, before I get too judgmental, I should remember when I was starting out, and at least had an inkling of awareness that colleagues seeing my books couldn't hurt my opportunities.

Re: Does your office have a library?

#67

Post by [deleted] »

feoren wrote: post #13

Several of these questions are hinting at whether your company culture is overly stratified or not: e.g., do seniors ever ask juniors for help. I can sense the author has worked in places where he wished he asked those questions sooner, and I think they're good questions to be asking of a company. A couple of them highlighted, at least for me, how lonely it is to be one of the very few competent software developers i…

[deleted]

Re: Does your office have a library?

#68

Post by wonderwonder »

"What would you take a pay cut for? What would you work on for free that makes money for someone else?" I thought about this and my first response was nothing. But then considered what if my kid had a disease and a company was working on the cure. I would take a pay cut or work for them for free to attempt to expedite the cure. If I'm willing to do that for my kid then would I be willing to do that for other kids? Probably not work for free as I need to eat and retire one day but I think I would probably be willing to take a pay cut working for a company whose product is a tangible net good for the world. Actually produce something of lasting value instead of widgets.

I used to work for a company that had a book shelf. I borrowed Design Patterns one day and just forgot to return it. Still have it all these years later.

I appreciate these questions as some of them make me take a step back and think about things.

Re: Does your office have a library?

#69

Post by CaliforniaKarl »

Yup! https://library.stanford.edu

I was once interested in reading "The best of 2600 : a hacker odyssey" by Goldstein (https://www.worldcat.org/title/191809593). Although Worldcat says that Stanford has a copy, that's not correct. But I had no problem using Interlibrary Loan to get a copy for a few weeks.

Re: Does your office have a library?

#70

Post by kafrofrite »

We actually have two libraries in the office :)

The first library has, for the biggest part, engineering books. Everyone can order books and everyone can borrow them. Most modern books also exist internally as e-books so the physical library currently is a mix of books, 3D prints, random music collections etc.

The second library is everything else. Multiple copies of various titles are available to take and keep, for free. Only requirement is to inform someone if the copy you picked up is the last one. Many employees are totally oblivious about this library.

Post reply on HN