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I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

skeptrune.com

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Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#111

Post by 392 »

stevesimmons wrote: post #53

If Google Maps would like to hire me so the km/miles switch can remember I only ever want to see distances in km, my contact details are in my HN profile. I must have changed that back from miles once a fortnight since Google Maps launched 20 years ago. That's 500 times. Totally ridiculous for a company who core goal is profiling their users...

Also accepting gmaps work, if only it could preemptively cache the return trip for any trip longer than an hour, so that I'm not stuck with no service trying to remember how I got there.

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#112

Post by khazhoux »

I often have the thought that it would be pretty awesome to take jobs for 6 months here and there just to implement specific features I want in my favorite SW, apps, sites, etc.

* Join Logic Pro team for 8 months and add better score notation tools

* Join Apple's iOS Music app and fix the weird blip that happens at ~17 seconds on any track

* Google Maps to stop the navigation/directions from spelling out how to get from my house to El Camino Real, which I've only done about 10,000 times.

* ...

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#113

Post by mhss »

jldugger wrote: post #56
stevesimmons wrote: post #53

If Google Maps would like to hire me so the km/miles switch can remember I only ever want to see distances in km, my contact details are in my HN profile. I must have changed that back from miles once a fortnight since Google Maps launched 20 years ago. That's 500 times. Totally ridiculous for a company who core goal is profiling their users...

> That's 500 times. Totally ridiculous for a company who core goal is profiling their users Seven interviews later and 1 PR later: Fails in A/B due to declining user engagement

It's funny cuz is true. Except it'd probably be one long design doc with 10 rounds of review, 15 CLs (PRs) and months of rollouts later ... fails A/B due to declining user engagement.

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#114

Post by fooker »

stevesimmons wrote: post #53

If Google Maps would like to hire me so the km/miles switch can remember I only ever want to see distances in km, my contact details are in my HN profile. I must have changed that back from miles once a fortnight since Google Maps launched 20 years ago. That's 500 times. Totally ridiculous for a company who core goal is profiling their users...

Google Maps core functionality is sort of in maintenance mode, and things have been slowly bit rotting over the last 3-4 years.

Unless you want to launch some AI feature (used to be chat app for ten years and then Google got bamboozled by ChatGPT…) you’ll not find allies and your career will not progress.

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#115

Post by xp84 »

sitzkrieg wrote: post #109
stevesimmons wrote: post #53

If Google Maps would like to hire me so the km/miles switch can remember I only ever want to see distances in km, my contact details are in my HN profile. I must have changed that back from miles once a fortnight since Google Maps launched 20 years ago. That's 500 times. Totally ridiculous for a company who core goal is profiling their users...

thinking google would ever care about improving ux ever again is hilarious

It’s true, except expand that to all big tech companies. The only time UX is changed it’s either to make ads more effective or to “streamline” things by shoving more and more of the functionality into an endless nested chain of ••• and More menus.

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#116

Post by xp84 »

Twirrim wrote: post #95
hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you’re there can you add a ‘how much I value my time’ input field for tolls? Google suggests I spend $20 through 3 tolls to save a single minute. Constantly. Edit: and while you’re there, move the ‘speed camera ahead, is it still there?’ Dialog. IT COVERS THE DAMN SPEED LIMIT ICON.

And also while you're there, if no car ever in the history of your app goes down the road at the speed limit ever it's a good indication you'll never be able to ever do it at that speed. e.g. small narrow single lane country roads which are only theoretically 60mph roads.

Imagine the data they must have on the speeds people actually drive on every mile of every road, they’d easily be able to warn you not that you’re “over the speed limit” as in driving 70 on the freeway, but more usefully, if you’re in the top X percentile of speeds usually or even currently driven, which actually is a decent measure of unsafe was and would also be a great predictor of likelihood to get a ticket.

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#117

Post by xp84 »

Carrok wrote: post #26
kulahan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clicking through the links in his article, I came across a guy who apparently did the same thing at Apple - he introduced the "auto remove" feature for expired passes added to your wallet, then promptly quit. I had no idea that's how that feature came about, but now I'm going to send a little mental thank you to him every time I get off a plane. That shit was FRUSTRATING.

Oh wow. Guess I need to get a job at Apple just to add a `Mark all as read` button to voicemails.

I need to get a job at Apple to stop “omw”-> “On my way!” (Complete with the `!`) from reappearing in my Text Replacements every month or two, no matter how many times I delete it.

(Try typing “I’m omw to the car” or something to see how annoying this is)

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#118

Post by emmelaich »

b8 wrote: post #55

Reminds me when I got banned from Amazon for suspected fraud (had an old account, but deleted my email and number since it was in a lot of DB dumps). After I got hired, I reached out to the guy in charge of the anti-fraud team at Amazon, and got unbanned. Emails to support etc. did nothing before I reached out internally (unbanned by 1am the next day).

I'd love for this to happen for me. I lost my Amazon account because they miswrote my phone number - having a single leading digit invalid for international use. So couldn't use text MFA and my phone with the OTP app had died the previous day.

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#119

Post by bongodongobob »

xmprt wrote: post #88
hansvm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I still have a bricked phone from my onboarding at Google, and no internal people cared either. There's a tool I could have used to fix it, but it's accompanied by a message saying that if you use it without permission you'll be fired.

> accompanied by a message saying that if you use it without permission you'll be fired Probably why none of the internal people cared either. They didn't want to be the person on the line in case it was determined that the usage wasn't valid. I'm curious how you bricked it beyond repair though. Most devices have a way to enter a recovery/flash mode where you can upload your own firmware from the bootloader. And if y…

A company the size of Google will for sure have it enrolled in MDM that prevents that.

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#120

Post by netsharc »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #64
SoftTalker wrote: post #28

> I added an AbortController to the debounced search function, so that it aborts any previous queries when a new one is made. This means that the search results are always relevant to what the user is currently typing. To me one of the most annoying things an application can do is go off and do something before I'm done telling it what to do. Filters that apply themselves without an explicit indication that I'm done…

When I implemented search-as-you-type on my blog, I decided to wait for the current search suggestion request to complete before doing a new one. Seemed like a reasonable balance between responsiveness and not overloading the server.

The video showing the problem in the article seems to show an avalanche of queries towards the server, I'm surprised no one cared about it, but I guess it's frontend people thinking "It's the backend/ops that have to deal with the problem!".

I wait about 250 ms before firing the request, if the user (well, me) continues typing, then the timer gets cancelled and the app waits another 250ms.

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