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Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

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Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#181

Post by philipp-gayret »

mdgld wrote: post #115
philipp-gayret wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He changed what he says his values are when dating women, to make dating woman easier for himself. Why he mentioned it, I don't know. He holds IMHO strange views on internet culture and portrays it as morally superior to not be part of any group mentioned; PUA/any forum/Christianity as a whole. A strange introduction for a software talk.

Idk how that was what you took away from the talk, and I think it says a lot about how you might approach dating, interacting with women, and personal values. He seemingly changed his views/approach to life and dating based on a re-evaluation of his values and experiences, whereas your framing makes me concerned that you believe the only way someone would/could become more attractive is by performing some sort of cha…

> makes me concerned that you believe the only way someone would/could become more attractive is by performing some sort of charade.

I am unapologetically my authentic self, I find that works best. If you had broadened your horizons as you say; you'd find the same.

> you may just find that the people you think despise you and who you despise have some very good points, and the people who you thought were the only group you had anything in common with are actually quite toxic and full of bad advice.

There's no need to tell other posters what they think. As for women; I love women, and have always been in long term relationships. Maybe I'm just a lucky guy. I think it's odd though to try and appear superior to these groups as he does. You are right there are toxic people, especially those seeking to earn income and status off of male loneliness. I agree with you fully. Having said that, I stand behind what I said earlier.

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#182

Post by eastbound »

strken wrote: post #127
hungryhobbit wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he was being a little hyperbolic, but the core concern (that programmers look competent right up until you have them write a FizzBuzz) is very real. (Source: I've helped hire lots of programmers.)

Fizzbuzz is interesting because it relies on either the candidate remembering the modulo operator, or the interviewer allowing them to write a modulo function. I can understand why a candidate could forget how to find the remainder from an integer division. The bigger issue is not having seen fizzbuzz before, really.

No, fizzbuzz trips people who already have a job because they make two for loops, make too few IFs, or generally don’t have a logic mindset and get out of the interview saying “This is not something that’s asked for in the job!”

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#183

Post by noisy_boy »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #179
spudlyo wrote: post #19

So in case you're worried about watching a 35 minute video and wishing you hadn't, here is what I think is an interesting observation that the speaker starts coming around to at around the 7 minute mark. Why does software suck? Management often has other priorities, and isn't interested in doing the hard work required to increase the reliability and reduce the technical debt in software. Engineers who care about such…

In defence of management, there is definitely a pattern of engineers (or employees in general, really) spending inordinate amounts on time doing something that they find personally gratifying but adds no real value to the product/business. I've been guilty of this myself.

The pendulum has swung way too much to the other side. Now, people have to fight for just doing a reasonably basic job testing the code while the manager breathes down their neck with impatience fueled by unrealistic expectations of LLM magic (and this is even for those managers who are technically aware enough of LLM challenges so I can only attribute that to wilful ignorance).

The expectation of the code not blowing up in production still stands though. There is no arguing with this unreasonableness.

It basically sucks.

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#184

Post by veltas »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #179
spudlyo wrote: post #19

So in case you're worried about watching a 35 minute video and wishing you hadn't, here is what I think is an interesting observation that the speaker starts coming around to at around the 7 minute mark. Why does software suck? Management often has other priorities, and isn't interested in doing the hard work required to increase the reliability and reduce the technical debt in software. Engineers who care about such…

In defence of management, there is definitely a pattern of engineers (or employees in general, really) spending inordinate amounts on time doing something that they find personally gratifying but adds no real value to the product/business. I've been guilty of this myself.

It's really easy to miss the value in Pointless Rewrite 5 of Core Module 4, but the grad who rewrites it will at least understand it afterwards and can fix the bugs they introduced and add new features to it easier. But the hard pill to swallow is they spent $200K of the engineering budget making the code worse.

The way to understand the value is to see the engineer as an asset. Engineers aren't interchangeable and no codebase can truly be documented and CI'd to the point where expertise doesn't matter.

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#185

Post by mike_hock »

strken wrote: post #127
hungryhobbit wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he was being a little hyperbolic, but the core concern (that programmers look competent right up until you have them write a FizzBuzz) is very real. (Source: I've helped hire lots of programmers.)

Fizzbuzz is interesting because it relies on either the candidate remembering the modulo operator, or the interviewer allowing them to write a modulo function. I can understand why a candidate could forget how to find the remainder from an integer division. The bigger issue is not having seen fizzbuzz before, really.

Fizzbuzz is not the least bit interesting on a technical level. It's interesting because even though it's trivial to "cheat" (you can just learn/memorize Fizzbuzz specifically), it still works because people so incompetent they can't even write something as trivial as Fizzbuzz are unlikely to have heard of it.

Fizzbuzz is used to confirm an already present suspicion of complete incompetence, not to assess skill (ability to pass is not a meaningful signal).

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#186

Post by quacked »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #93
ianbutler wrote: post #32

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.

> 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 I don't think the management at most companies could identify good talent if it poked them in the eye. Good talent wants to have agency and freedom to act, the average manager wants to breathe down your neck at all moments

I'm inclined to agree with this. If management can't personally code, and they don't know how the big companies acquire talent, the company ends up in a deadspin of not paying enough, not adequately examining coding skills during interview and probationary periods, and having mediocre seniors who have been around long enough to understand the eccentricities of the stack but still aren't actually any good controlling the hiring and training pipeline and selecting the new architecture.

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#187

Post by r_lee »

ianbutler wrote: post #32
spudlyo wrote: post #19

So in case you're worried about watching a 35 minute video and wishing you hadn't, here is what I think is an interesting observation that the speaker starts coming around to at around the 7 minute mark. Why does software suck? Management often has other priorities, and isn't interested in doing the hard work required to increase the reliability and reduce the technical debt in software. Engineers who care about such…

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.

I don't know, at least in Europe it's impossible to get a job right now unless you're well connected

companies seem really eager to just decline applicants before they even get interviewed

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#188

Post by Johanx64 »

joshcsimmons wrote: post #30
leecommamichael wrote: post #28

> “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…

This viewpoint is preposterous to me in the first place. I am Christian. Everything in the world seems to be falling apart these days and my faith is one of the few real-feeling things!

> I am Christian. Everything in the world seems to be falling apart these days and my faith is one of the few real-feeling things!

Well, the world is exactly as "God" created it.

Thus, if the world is falling apart, then the God - observably so - has done a real shoddy job.

If you come upon a piece of well written software - you can infer that it's written by a good and competent programmer.

And if the software on the other hand is shitty, then more likely than not - made and created by a shitty programmer.

World as is - is obviously created by either somebody extremely incompetent or downright malevolent as far as UX for living beings is concerned.

Re: Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

#189

Post by rererereferred »

adamdb wrote: post #128

I once had an argument with a close friend of mine while earning her PHD in a non-computer engineering field. It was about the semantics of "Computer Engineering" and "Software Engineering", or any variant involving computers. Her argument was that every (virtually, I think?) other engineering discipline requires a certificate after graduation to ensure their competency. Every since then I've also argued for similar…

There was one teacher/dean who was adamant at getting the career out of the "engineering" area at my country's universities and that "Software Engineering" should not exist as a career.

One funny interaction I remember, MariaDB's Monty came to give a talk and he asked "If one wants to help with MariaDB should they be a software engineer or a computer scientist?" Monty's answer was "you just need to know C."

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