101–110 of 246 posts
I hope I can get this out soon
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sadly I have run into people like that. To this day I am convinced they paid someone to stand in for the interviews.
I'm probably the person ya'll are hating on. Writing code and writing code under pressure while you have a full blown anxiety attack are not the same thing. I'm lucky if I can accurately tell you what I had for breakfast once that triggers..
I found most of the people who couldn’t program were not the nervous ones, but were smooth talkers who probably didn’t write much code. Maybe they did at one point, maybe they never did, it was hard to know, but I couldn’t get even logical steps to solve straight forward problems out of them. Those were the worst interviews, not because the candidate wasn’t a fit for the role, but because then I had to panic to try to keep the experience positive, constructive, and collaborative. When I expected to fill 20-40 minutes talking through a problem with someone who can’t solve problems, let alone produce anything remotely looking like code, I always found that painful.
The questions I asked could be solved by non-programmers (my wife, who was an elementary teacher and even my kindergarten son could come up with reasonable solutions, but of course not code). That was probably the biggest issue I ran into with nervous people - they didn’t think about the problem first, they’d try writing code before really thinking through. That was usually easy to correct and I didn’t fault anyone who could handle correction and guidance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think this is really entirely true. Everyone who isn't a FAANG or Frontier Lab seem to be absolutely starving for good talent. It's far more often that I hear "we interviewed someone we thought looked good and they couldn't even write a for loop, where are all the good engineers". I think you have far more leverage than you think in most places still.
We really need to let go of the notion, that FAANG necessarily has especially skilled engineers. Their products indicate, that this is not the case. Look at what kind of shitshows Google search and YouTube are for example. Or how FB is only bots now. Do these things still rake in money? Yes. But that's rather due to history and entrenchment, than sheer quality of these platforms/tools. Something all of FAANG have fai…
Part of that is also about who management and HR are socially comfortable with and candidates that may have connections with people in the company. It's often not a level playing field because of cronyism, nepotism, and many other -isms.
That's also why a good engineer, confident in their skills and value, needs to read the room or figure out what's going on. If the situation is not to their liking, then jump to another company or start their own business, whenever the chance presents itself.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This not a rare thing to express. There are a lot of people raised under conservative Christian environments who have spent a considerable amount of time recovering from this. It is not surprising that they feel the need to express something of the journey that has dominated much of their early life. Taylor Tomlinson puts much of this into her comedy. She often asks the audience to call out if they were similarly scr…
"an ideology that will not seek consensus with his values" This just seems normal and expected. Kids are raised by their parents. Parents try to impart their wisdom on their kids, often in the form of rules meant to protect them. These rules are necessarily over restrictive due to simplification during various ages. These rules are also out of date with the new generation. It's always a right of passage for children…
It’s one thing to try and impart your values onto your children—that seems like what most parents would want to do, although I wouldn’t go so far as saying it’s what they should do. It’s another to say, for example, “you were born with a penis and so if I see you wearing a dress I’ll beat you and send you to a camp where people demean you and question your innermost feelings until you change them or pretend to do so”, instead of having a conversation about gender vs sex vs sexual orientation, gender roles, society, and culture, and “nature vs nurture”.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"becoming an adult" is a thing people do, this will include no longer agreeing with everything your parents taught you. This is mundane and what you have described. "my parents are/were abusive" is something a plurality of people (and especially those raised in evangelical churches) experience. Within that dynamic, the 'value' at issue here is 'Do I, your child, have a right to my own body and choices?'; Too often, t…
"have a right to my own body and choices?" Not sure exactly what you mean by own body. However, under the law children generally do not have a right to their own choices and are expected to be controlled by their parents (really look at the stutes around this stuff and you might be surprised). After all, parents are held responsible for their child's actions under the law.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"becoming an adult" is a thing people do, this will include no longer agreeing with everything your parents taught you. This is mundane and what you have described. "my parents are/were abusive" is something a plurality of people (and especially those raised in evangelical churches) experience. Within that dynamic, the 'value' at issue here is 'Do I, your child, have a right to my own body and choices?'; Too often, t…
"have a right to my own body and choices?" Not sure exactly what you mean by own body. However, under the law children generally do not have a right to their own choices and are expected to be controlled by their parents (really look at the stutes around this stuff and you might be surprised). After all, parents are held responsible for their child's actions under the law.
> “I almost fell into this trap (...) I was raised by conservative Christian parents and thereby had so, so much to learn, and unlearn, in order to date comfortable and confidently. Is this engagement bait? Is this a cultural critique? What is meant to be said here? At any rate, this is the kind of speech which will alienate a lot of people. Look, I'm more on the progressive end of things, I get it, but I think this…
I liked the talk and was about to post a link to it in the $dayjob slack, but this threw me off as well. Still watched it to the end, and I still recommended it to a friend (along with the Youtube channel of the "Software should work" conf), but I'm saddened that the talk paints Christianity as something that is inflicted upon you and that you should strive to get rid of. It's clear that he had a bad experience, and…
> “I almost fell into this trap (...) I was raised by conservative Christian parents and thereby had so, so much to learn, and unlearn, in order to date comfortable and confidently. Is this engagement bait? Is this a cultural critique? What is meant to be said here? At any rate, this is the kind of speech which will alienate a lot of people. Look, I'm more on the progressive end of things, I get it, but I think this…
I don’t think he’s trying to gain your approval, if that’s what you mean.
> “I almost fell into this trap (...) I was raised by conservative Christian parents and thereby had so, so much to learn, and unlearn, in order to date comfortable and confidently. Is this engagement bait? Is this a cultural critique? What is meant to be said here? At any rate, this is the kind of speech which will alienate a lot of people. Look, I'm more on the progressive end of things, I get it, but I think this…
> Is this engagement bait? Is this a cultural critique? What is meant to be said here? At any rate, this is the kind of speech which will alienate a lot of people. Look, I'm more on the progressive end of things, I get it, but I think this just feels mean and divisive from the perspective of a conservative OR a Christian Maybe, as a progressive, you should listen to the experience before rejecting it solely because "…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He shouldn't talk about his own experience? Why not? Why is it in poor taste to talk about a difficulty he went through?
When you put it that way, I have no issue agreeing wholeheartedly. He’s making an example of incel culture as it appears to him to apply to software culture. After I describe it that way, I think he didn’t have to stoke the religious right in doing so. Something that hadn’t occurred to me until your reply (thank you) was that he might not be aware he’s doing that, and that is where I may be wrong in assessing the “ta…
It’s one thing to purposefully provoke people, and it’s another to tiptoe around any personal expression or hot-button issue for fear of offending someone, and that is not limited to one end of the political spectrum. I have been on all sides of this; I was raised by a computer scientist (used to speaking freely/veracity being valued) and a doctor (used to self-censorship/not offending being valued), and have worked in academia, industry, and now medicine, and have experienced conservative as well as liberal approaches to both promulgation and suppression of free expression.