Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like I've read this before some here...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33403174 I have!!
Hah! Well it was relevant again!
Does your office have a library?
71–80 of 165 posts
Re: Does your office have a library?
#72I’m working on that, but a lot of technical books become obsolete shortly after being printed, and those are, sadly, the easiest to justify to the bean-counters.
Re: Does your office have a library?
#73Many of these questions, I've thought about, and seen "good answers" in various places I've worked. I also have a tiny "bad answer" about the one in the title.
One place had a technical library room, with lots of academic journals (ACM, IEEE, etc.) and books, IIRC mostly belonging to the technical co-founders.
So, in this established company, someone probably outside of engineering started giving out "Quality Awards". At one company meeting, they gave a Quality Award to an intern, for organizing the library.
Shortly after, one of the co-founders remarked to me in passing -- amused, and lowered voice -- something about that organizing the library for Quality... seemed to involve packing the co-founder's journal subscriptions on the shelves so tightly, that there was no room to insert new issues of each journal.
Though I suspect that the co-founder was skeptical of whatever chain of events led to their company giving out Quality Awards at all, it's good that they had a sense of humor about it.
That a sense of humor is compatible with being serious and driven, is one of the things I learned from various colleagues.
Re: Does your office have a library?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah right. Your concern that massively overrepresented groups might be overlooked while underrepresented groups are emphasized is just a bit of fun. It's a fun position to be in where whether you get a job or not is just a thought experiment.
You're still not getting it. The thought experiment regarding diversity challenges the (typically) inconsistent implementation of it where it's more like a candy story where you pick what you like (or deem socially acceptable) and dismiss or even discourage anything else. That's not true diversity. It's equity. Similarly, as you suggest that representation matters, and if you'd consistently believe that, then we shou…
You're not getting it. There was no thought experiment. You are arguing for stupidity.
Re: Does your office have a library?
#75This is one of those old school things I missed when I moved from Microsoft to Google, another being having a private office. (Though Microsoft is switching to open plan offices as well as a cost saving measure.) The Microsoft library had tons of books, subscriptions to scholarly journals, and made it easy to order new books.
It's easy for bean counters to measure the cost savings of open plan layouts (e.g. higher utilization of office space). I wonder if anyone has tried to measure the productivity loss of open plan vs private offices, which might tilt it back towards private offices.
There is no substitute for having a door to close to isolate noise, and being able to do some intensive work.
Re: Does your office have a library?
#76This posts starts off alright, then unfortunately quickly devolves into presenting trolling-level questions as something insightful.
Re: Does your office have a library?
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was actually in a power plant, which was not as interesting as it sounds. At least most days. My masters degree is Library Science. I've had a weird and winding career. I'm a sysadmin now.
Library Science sounds fascinating. I always assumed you master dewey decimal and you collect your certificate as a librarian. What other (broad) topics does such a degree cover?
My degree covered everything from copyright law to NoSQL databases. Most modern programs are highly interdisciplinary and students have wide latitude to select courses that suit their own interests. I did learn a little Dewey, though.
Re: Does your office have a library?
#78This is one of those old school things I missed when I moved from Microsoft to Google, another being having a private office. (Though Microsoft is switching to open plan offices as well as a cost saving measure.) The Microsoft library had tons of books, subscriptions to scholarly journals, and made it easy to order new books.
It's easy for bean counters to measure the cost savings of open plan layouts (e.g. higher utilization of office space). I wonder if anyone has tried to measure the productivity loss of open plan vs private offices, which might tilt it back towards private offices. There is no substitute for having a door to close to isolate noise, and being able to do some intensive work.
What a throw back... what is this 2015? Are we arguing about open offices? Guess I will spout my thoughts.
I love my cubicle. It's my personal private space. I hate open desks.
I really did like an in between I had once - which was a cubicle in a room with no windows, and the other 4 people on my team. I would only overhear relevant things, nobody walked into our room for no reason, and it made it easy to say ' hey can someone look at this' and usually you'd get help.
( no windows - great for programming, I also had a desk job that was sun facing at 4pm with crappy blinds... swear I lost some vision permanently from that).
Re: Does your office have a library?
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Library Science sounds fascinating. I always assumed you master dewey decimal and you collect your certificate as a librarian. What other (broad) topics does such a degree cover?
My degree covered everything from copyright law to NoSQL databases. Most modern programs are highly interdisciplinary and students have wide latitude to select courses that suit their own interests. I did learn a little Dewey, though.
This is so interesting because I definitely imagined "Library Science" as something as a relic/old but clearly that's not the case.
Re: Does your office have a library?
#80This posts starts off alright, then unfortunately quickly devolves into presenting trolling-level questions as something insightful.
(OP) Sorry! I was just riffing late at night. It wasn't meant to be that deep. Which questions didn't you like?