6,770 karma · joined February 26, 2009
Not really. It's a difference between "should have" and "nice to have".
If you go in with the expectation that your job and your vocation should align, then you're setting yourself up for a negative experience. Maybe not immediately, but definitely down the road, because that alignment won't last forever.
I prefer to go in with the idea that it's a desirable, but entirely optional bonus.
I guess it depends on how "risk averse" you are in this context. It's kinda like salary negotiations. I prefer to put most of the weight on the base salary. Equity and bonuses are nice, but if the base salary isn't enough to live comfortably, then you're setting yourself up for a big risk: you're one management decision away from coming up short. Yes, I know that most US employers can fire you at will in theory, but in practice getting laid off doesn't happen as often as the myriad of stuff that can adversely affect your bonus or equity.
Different people have different outlooks. Mine puts the "job-passion balance" in the same category as "bonus" and "equity". It comes from my own, personal experience. YMMV.
The vast majority of "newsletters" I get today are from companies that assume that I want to keep hearing from them just because I once did a one-time transaction with them. And no, it's not because I forgot to uncheck the "I want to receive blah blah blah" checkbox. I'm careful to opt out whenever there's an option for that.
I don't know about other people, but I call that stuff spam. Just because it isn't an e-mail from someone who got my address from a dump and decided to cold-mail me with their crap (or phishing or other scams), doesn't mean it's not unsolicited e-mail, i.e. spam.
Maybe things have changed over the years and I just wasn't paying attention, but I've trained myself not to press "unsubscribe" on something I didn't explicitly opt in to receive.
Call me cynical and jaded, but I don't believe "building something valuable" is the point of employment.
"Building something valuable" is the point of my vocation. I used to believe that the employment and vocation should align. Over the course of more than 20 years of my professional career, the vast majority of the employers I've had have done their best to disabuse me of that notion.
The way I see it, the point of employment is to ensure you have the money and the benefits you need to live comfortably. If your employment and your vocation align, it's a nice bonus. If they don't, do what you're passionate about in your free time.
> Many hackers want to both provide the best possible life for their families and participate in a grand adventure of changing the world by creating something people want.
If you can get that, it's awesome. But if you can't, then you have to choose. And I know what I'm choosing.
You're only forced to use stuff when you're in the small minority that cares about not using stuff. Moxie Marlinspike explained it perfectly in his DEF CON 18 keynote.
Thing is, I don't think there's any conclusive proof that the majority of customer would be okay with what you're describing.
Most of us on PC are getting along just fine with one or two game launchers. I'm using GOG and Steam. My kid uses Steam and Epic.
When Funcom tried adding their own launcher for Conan Exiles, the vast majority of players berated them so hard on their forums that they removed it.
Also, it would randomly decide to stop heeding voice commands.
On top of that, any time there's an update to either Android Auto or Spotify, I had to pray things would keep working. If they didn't, sometimes The Ritual would fix things. Other times, it stayed broken until the next update.
And finally we arrive to the crux of the problem. Sounds like they should be regulated, yes?
There's no need to drag the 1st amendment into the discussion at all, because this really has nothing to do with it.
You're comparing that with a mob of people who violently clashed with the police outside the Capitol, then stormed inside, broke windows, climbed the walls, sat inside offices with their feet up on desks, walked away with "souvenirs", and planted IEDs. The result of that? 13 arrests.
Can you please explain why your comparison is not disingenuous?
I don't know the exact wording of section 230. Even if I knew it, it wouldn't help, because I'm not a lawyer.
That's why I don't understand where the line is drawn and why. If the idea is to "protect open platforms from liability from user content", why is it okay to have policies that remove child porn, but not those that remove incitement to hate crimes?
EDIT: What I specifically doubt is that Trump can just write out a pardon for "anyone on Parler". Doesn't it have to be a pardon for someone specific? Or can it be as generic and vague as he wants?
The current state of democracy in countries like UK and US brings to mind that famous Churchill quote:
"No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
The common conclusion seems to be "oh, okay, guess that's it, then" rather than "maybe it's time to try something we haven't yet".
I moved here 7 years ago, and my son has gone through a public elementary school and is currently in the last year of a public middle school. If it was just one year or just one teacher or even just one school (or one district), I could write it off to bad luck. Unfortunately, it's pretty clear that the whole system is abysmal.
But after I read your comment, I went back to the story and did a Google image search for a few (but not all) of those pictures. And guess what? They all come from other sources.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's not like I was looking for hostility. I was reading the comment and nodding along and then the hostility came out of nowhere and smacked me in the face.
The other day I saw a comment on a forum about a videogame saying something along the lines of "an experienced programmer would wonder why there are two different compilers at work here".
The industry has expanded enough that we can have people with a decent amount of time spent programming without ever encountering things that other people with the same amount of time consider normal.
FWIW, there is another one that I can use, that is almost identical to the one I'm looking for.
I believe that we should live in a society with much better education. An essential ingredient of that education -- much more important than the mere learning of facts -- is the understanding of how to approach a discussion, how to think logically, how to question things, etc. A crucial element of that "essential ingredient" is the understanding of the importance of context and of being informed.
I certainly didn't mean to imply that someone in Brazil should be taught, as part of their standard education, about the US constitution. But that puts the onus on them to get informed about the topic of the discussion before jumping into a discussion of it. And when participating in such a discussion, they should also probably indicate that they might not have the same understanding of the context that everyone else might have.
In short, I believe that we should all receive the education that teaches us not only the relevant context of the things we are expected to be dealing with in the future, but also that it's our responsibility to be informed when participating in discussions.
Think about it this way: you don't rehash the rules of football (or "soccer", if you're from the US) every time you talk about a match. You don't go into the history of how those rules came to be what they are now. It's all part of the context and you only revisit that context when there's a reason to do so.
The relationship of slavery and the US constitution should be part of the context everyone is aware of. That means it should be part of education everyone receives. Thinking that it needs explicit mention in every discussion of the constitution implies a belief that most people aren't aware of the context, and that is a problem that needs a proper solution.
I think it's fair of you to point out that there are certain scenarios in which healthcare is not paid for by the person getting it and everyone else ends up paying for it indirectly. I also think it's fair of you to point out that it's handled in such a way that it creates a byzantine system that ends up costing us all a lot more than it should.
But that's a long long way from claiming that "voters in the US are already paying for healthcare for all", in the context of the current discussion. "Voters in the US are paying for a byzantine system that handles extreme cases that happen because of the failure to have a proper healthcare for all" is as far as I could go with your arguments ;)
I've been living in the US for almost 7 years, and this is news to me. As far as I understand, Medicare only applies to people who are 65+ years old, and Medicaid only applies to families with certain income (relative to family size). What did I miss?
> The USA doesn't (generally) let people die if they can't afford healthcare (people may be driven into bankruptcy, but they won't be left to die), so those costs are all getting paid by the public.
As COVID-19 has demonstrated quite effectively, death is not the only outcome to focus on. Also, driving a person into bankruptcy or otherwise ruining their future is not what I would call "healthcare paid for by everyone".
I am sincerely hoping that I have missed something in your arguments.
I don't think there's anything wrong -- or snarky -- with pointing out that there are whole countries out there where each and every developer would have as much trouble coughing up the necessary $100 as you would have had during your years of homelessness.