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Kharvok

157 karma · joined November 13, 2020

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Kharvok··on A reason for high housing prices: restrictive land-use regulations
Without these incentives housing supply would be even lower. The incentives are designed to encourage the creation of additional housing units. Without liquidity in the space new housing creation would stagnate.
Kharvok··on EU countries approve 2035 phaseout of CO2-emitting cars
Electric cars are still far too small for taller than average families to drive. Until there's a viable SUV alternative for 4 6ft+ adults to fit comfortably I don't think electric will take off in the US.
Kharvok··on Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing
How can you build social trust when there is no commonality with your neighbor? Without some commonality of principles how can I trust that any social contract would be recognized or understood. How do people flourish in that environment?
Kharvok··on Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing
This is an important check to developer greed. You have to be able to maintain quality of life with new development.
Kharvok··on Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?
Some of my teams were fully remote about eight weeks in 2020, while others have been remote the entire time. I don't believe in full RTO, just hybrid.

1. The last few years have demonstrated that projects with teams that are primarily remote require a higher degree of project overhead staffing. I think this is most evident with very small teams. For example, it's fairly easy for a small internal tool team to coordinate their work without a project manager, design, or business analyst if they are in close phyiscal proximity. The struggle is when you distance that team from larger products/project. Even in the minimal case creating visibility for that small team into larger workstreams requires overhead itself. With the macro environment and with leaders being forced to tighten the belt, this is less and less possible. All communication has to be structured fully remotely. That structure requires management.

2. I've found about 20% of people have the ability to maintain a professional work environment at home. I'm constantly seeing in meetings where highly compensated employees are providing childcare during working hours. I'm all for flexibility, but it becomes a distraction.

3.Junior employees have little to no ability to develop skills from seniors. I have hired entire classes of employees in software engineering roles that started in a fully remote environment, realized they weren't learning anything, and then came to work in a hybrid setting.

Kharvok··on What happened when the San Francisco Bay Area rejected growth
What does the adoption of public transportation look like in non-homogenous vs homogenous populations?
Kharvok··on The ethics of reclining airplane seats
I'm 6'10. What is built in my favor?
Kharvok··on The ethics of reclining airplane seats
Airline seat ergo contours pitch people forward if they are over 6'3 in height. Reclining is the only way to sit up straight.
Kharvok··on Ask HN: Have you experienced “hiring fraud?”
I have first hand experience interviewing developers via Zoom who are trying to mime the audio from a speakerphone on their end with someone answering questions.
Kharvok··on Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year
People want to live near peers. Low income housing creates problem areas and people don't want to live near problem areas.
Kharvok··on YouTube joins Facebook in banning Andrew Tate
I don't think he actually made TikTok content?
Kharvok··on What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?
I think companies have had to lower expectations for new hires over the last several years. These companies now see an opportunity with a slight market correction to freeze hiring to deal with the lower performers and possibly replace.
Kharvok··on Why America can’t build
Why are bike lanes held up as the optimal solution in small municipalities with an aging population?
Kharvok··on Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts
Why would you be happy with a 3% raise any year in tech?
Kharvok··on We Can Cut Traffic Deaths in Half, but Nobody Wants To
Autonomous driving solves for all of these problems.
Kharvok··on Rocket Mortgage to trim 8% of workforce as home-loan market shrinks
Rocket, like other mortgage firms staffed up the last 3 years on processing roles. Those are the first positions you're seeing let go with refinance volume falling off a cliff due to rising rates.

Also Rocket recently shifted their technology strategy to build fewer point solutions in house where there was an adequate market solution available, focusing more on customer facing technology to build in house.

Kharvok··on Report: 90% of nurses considering leaving the profession in the next year
Hospital consolidation into major for-profit networks is largely to blame
Kharvok··on How to Quiet Your Mind Chatter (2021)
My thoughts work much like this. For example, if I'm discussing some kind of design or graph relationship, I actually see what I'm talking about vividly. The problem is it's really hard to make eye contact while doing this. It's not that I find eye contact uncomfortable in conversation. It's just that discussing many topics, especially technical ones, it's not possible to see my ideas while looking directly at someone.

I find this most frustrating in work that is interrupted and explanation is sought. So for example, if I'm thinking through the most efficient way to accomplish X, taking into accounty Y and Z, and someone walks into my office and asks me what I'm working on it's frustrating stating my thought process on the spot because none of that reasoning was assembled using language.

What are others experience with this?

Kharvok··on How to organize yourself as a solo founder
I'm absolutely paralyzed by this at the moment.

I want the mobility of a digital solution, so much of my documentation and task items are spread across Evernote and Trello. Except an analog solution such as a note card or post-it notes has a physical prescense that's very focused and attention grabbing.

Kharvok··on What happens when the public lose confidence in academic findings?
This is largely a myth.
Kharvok··on What happens when the public lose confidence in academic findings?
good summary of all the relevant data and studies for the last 50 years:

https://www.amazon.com/Know-Debunking-Myths-about-Intelligen...

Kharvok··on What happens when the public lose confidence in academic findings?
There is absolutely a way to have leecode type tests for most jobs. We know that the single best predictor of job success and performance is IQ. Academics act mostly as a signal in some industries where you just back into IQ ineffectively by creating certain filters for pedigree.

instead of IQ test -> competence signal

you have:

SAT/ACT = IQ Test -> university acceptance criteria -> degree/credentials -> competence signal

Kharvok··on Spending more on retaining developers reduces the cost of hiring developers
This is exactly my struggle as a CTO in a non-tech company. The comp & ben budget I'm operating off of started taking shape 18+ months ago and is now "locked-in". It's not only overcoming non-technical CEO's as you're also having to convince your other non-technical peers that Tech should be the exception. The best "evidence" most CEOs and CFOs will accept is outdated aggregated market data that can't be accurately sliced for applicable skils.

I've had to knowingly let attrition happen to prove a point.

If you can't change your company, change your company I guess.

Kharvok··on Facebook and Instagram to temporarily allow calls for violence against Russians
I 100% support Ukraine but this is building a muscular reflex pattern than can't be unlearned. We shouldn't have private tech enforcing state wishes. They are no longer un-biased parties.
Kharvok··on The war on gifted education
I don't think people are advocating that education itself is just a signaling of inherent ability. This would be like saying it's pointless for an athlete to train because their maximum athletic ability is pretty much determined.
Kharvok··on The war on gifted education
I agree with your concerns but we already do this somewhat informally with public education in much of the country with college prep, advanced, honors, and AP courses.

I'm just advocating we act with more purpose and honest intention about what we're already doing.

Kharvok··on The war on gifted education
You aren't trying. We know IQ is predictive of success. No one is saying an individual from a poorer community can't be intelligent/academically successful.

What we're saying is that we shouldn't hold someone born without the ability to be academically successful to unreasonable standards.

Kharvok··on The war on gifted education
and household economic prosperity is generally corollary to what?
Kharvok··on The war on gifted education
What would this select for? All you would be doing is establishing a poor proxy for general intelligence though you would likely select for general intelligence on the whole by grading "maturity".
Kharvok··on The war on gifted education
It's because there is almost nothing that can be done. IQ is largely genetic, with a few social levers that can be pulled. We shouldn't expect from people what they are not capable of doing.

This applies to everyone.

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