NearAP

>>> But I blame the work for the death because he only took sick leave a few months back, then suddenly died. That to me says he worked right up until he couldn't anymore.<<<

I don't believe there's enough information to reach that conclusion. It is quite possible that his sickness was sudden or that it was discovered suddenly at which point he took a leave of absence. There are numerous people who go into the hospital for a routine check of - I feel tired/I have a constant headache, etc only to be told they have a life threatening disease. By the time the father of a friend was diagnosed with lung cancer, it was already stage 4 or so and he stopped working then

Comcast is quite guilty of this. I’m on a 2 year contract but within one year, Comcast has increased my bill by raising the Regional Sports Fee and broadcast TV fee TWICE.

In the last 4 years, they have consistently raised these 2 fees each time effectively raising the final amount I pay which is higher than what is on my contract.

When I call to complain, they point me to a section of my contract (in small letters) which say broadcast and regulatory fees may change within the contract duration.

I wish the government would crack down on this (they are just being plain deceptive) or that they get some competition

1) Do you allow for remote work?

2) Do you pay for relocation to NY (from within the US)?

H1-B covers both folks who are based outside the US when they were recruited and students who graduated from US schools and transitioned from F1 (student visa) to H1-B. If you go to computer science/STEM departments (at least for the top schools), you will notice that a significant portion of them are foreign students. It is thus not surprising to see a lot of being hired.

Also, foreign students being hired after graduating from US schools are very much less likely to be cheated upon when it comes to pay.

The challenge with Enterprise software is that the people who pay for it are usually not the people who use it everyday or a lot. So the vendor takes feedback from the end-users but they still have to demo to the guys holding the purse strings and when those guys give feedback (usually different from that of the every day user), vendor has to go with feedback from the purse string holder. If the vendor doesn't do this, the project doesn't get approved.

I think the proper thing here is for the purse string holders to defer to the views/feedback of the every day users.

>>>> Users absolutely hated the new system. Sure, the old system was ugly, but it had everything they needed, right at their fingertips!<<<<

I understand this but before agreeing to this, I think one should look at the issue of "change management". By default, people resist change. Once you get used to something, it is difficult to adapt to a new one (even if it is better). If the UI is "really bad", then it should definitely be changed but this should be done in tandem with change management (lots of training, slow cut-over to the new system, etc).

>>>> But I also think it's ignorant to say that companies just want folks proficient in specific languages. >>>.

Fair Point. For experienced hires, companies want technical knowledge of a technology/domain

>>>> But if you aren't requiring your PMs to be technical, I mean the sheer amount of people qualified to do that job (even with stipulations such as "knows design")>>>

Well, for experienced hires too, domain specific knowledge is also relevant for PMs.

A counter point - I've worked with Developers who have told me a load of BS. In those instances I knew it was BS because I was quite conversant with that bit of knowledge (this is not to imply that I'm some astounding developer; but anybody with some basic technical knowledge would have realized it was BS).

>>>> It's also just a case where lots more people are qualified for this kind of job so it's not as hard to fill a position when the need arrises.>>>>

Interesting. I think it's the opposite. Because PM culture differs from company to company, I feel like companies interview for PMs with a bias for how they expect their PMs to behave. This would be unlike Developers where companies are looking for folks proficient in specific languages.

I've had friends who interviewed with companies for PM positions and the focus was on their doing great UI mockups. The interviewer was looking for good UIs. Unfortunately, these folks were coming from places where the UI mockup they did was just basic placement of elements to communicate the elements they expected their solutions to use. A seperate design team would later turn their mockups into beautiful UIs

You're right - it differs from company to company.

I think you'll enjoy the role if you are in a company where the PM drives the feature - the PM determines what features should be implemented, does the design (UI, logic, behavior, etc and then Dev does the technical design and codes it).

One way to measure your value is also your ability to solve customer's problems. By this I mean - you could have a feature/capabilities and then a customer has a unique situation; being able to figure out how to use your feature in a non-conventional manner or coming up with a work-around (not one that creates a loop hole) to solve the problem can feel rewarding. The challenge though is that it is sometimes difficult to quantify this when you are trying to move companies

>>>> What skills are most useful in an engineer, and how do we make you look good/help you make us look good >>>>

1) I don't think it's technical skills per se (your hierarchy would have reviewed that when you were hired). I think it's more of an attitude. I've lost count of the number of times PMs make a case for a feature to behave in a specific manner and Dev doesn't want to invest the time or effort to even investigate if it's possible/how that can be done. From Dev POV - we already do it this way so live with it. PM makes the argument that is not the best from a functional POV but Dev is simply not interested.

Note: I'm not saying all Devs behave this way, just pointing out a technical way of doing something might not provide the best functional experience and being open to explore or understand what PM is trying to achieve is important.

2) Ability to look at the big picture. Sometimes one is so focused on the immediate tasks and its technical design that they miss the fact that the PM has a road map and this feature or set of features is just one bit on the roadmap. This means that whatever is being built now should if possible make it easier to implement the other features down the line.

I believe companies have more software engineers than PMs which invariably means there will be more software engineering vacancies than PM vacancies

I also think the attrition rate for PMs are much much lower than that of Developers.

Another resource - https://www.forproductmanagers.com/

A friend of mine got a copy of the H1B petition that Oracle submitted on his behalf. The document includes a DOL classification of his job and the minimum wage for it and the amount Oracle was offering him.

My understanding is that the law says the wage being offered must at least meet the minimum wage specified by DOL

I interviewed at Oracle, was made an offer but didn't take it. I know people who took the offer. My knowledge/experience is

1) For H1B, the offer made by Oracle was higher than the minimum wage guideline by DOL for those specific positions. You get a copy of the H1B petition submitted by Oracle and it includes all of this data.

2) Your salary is dependent on what you negotiated with your recruitment coordinator (Oracle will not change your figure once an offer has been sent to you). The recruitment coordinator makes an offer and you try as much as possible to counter. If you have prior work experience, you will most likely use your previous salary information as a basis for negotiation. I assume this figure you have quoted will form a basis for what Oracle will offer you. If you don't have prior work experience, then of course, they will make you an offer that they prefer.

3) Oracle pay increases are rare and typically small. This is why your starting salary is quite important because it basically forms the basis for your income for your years at Oracle

It depends on the company. For some companies, the PM is responsible for "what" should be built and "how" (functional how) it will behave. Developers then try to implement the PM's "how" and then there's a back and forth between Dev and PM. For example, Dev might say - there's a better way to achieve this but it will change the functional behavior; or if we implement what you want, the page load time will be slow so is it OK if we do it this other way...

At the end of the day, the PM's focus is - how will the average user use this product, what does the average user expect this product to do. That is generally not Dev's focus. Dev's focus is typically - what is the best way to get this done so that application loads quickly, doesn't place undue stress on the server, etc. Sometimes, Dev doesn't pay attention to how the UI looks, they just care that the code runs efficiently

See these links

1) https://www.forproductmanagers.com/5686683802533888/who-is-a...

2) https://www.forproductmanagers.com/5658962204557312/who-is-a...

Product Managers - identify problems to be solved, decide/play a role into what features goes into MVP or a release, talks to customers, comes up with/designs the solutions (functional solutions) to the problems (aka features and how they interconnect), do UI designs (major UI designs can go to the UX team, smaller UI designs stay with product manager), etc

If your company is using the sprint model, the Product manager is not doing much of project management.

At the end of the day, what a PM does depends on the company and how they use PMs

1) Straight from Business Schools - Folks who go into technology tend to become PMs after their MBAs

2) Internal transfers - Software Engineers switch to PM

3) Management/Technology Consultant -> PM: Folks switch from consulting (where they are implementing products designed by vendors) to becoming PMs in the vendor companies.

I'm curious - do you think the figures for room and board is generally high? Or do you just think it is high for the city?

I'm asking because a friend was in the hospital in the bay area for 7 days and his room and board was approximately $21,000

To stretch this a bit, I feel like "search" in general is a weak spot for Apple. For example, I think the search in Apple Mail and searching my Macbook are both very bad, especially the one for Apple Mail.

Your logic sounds right, which takes me back to my original question - is there an App Store policy that Developers have to maintain that Ad-free version or provide some form of compensation to those who paid if the developer decides to pull the Ad-free version

If you purchase an App from the App store and then change your phone, I assume you should be able to carry over the paid app to your new phone.

Does anybody know if the App Store enforces this and what (if anything) they do to vendors who violate this?

It seems that there are numerous complaints on the review page of "word with friends" by people who paid for the Ad-free version but when they moved to a new device, they no longer have access to the Ad-free version

I got the same message and I'm using Chrome, no ad blocker and I'm not in incognito mode.

1) https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/09/trump-is-back-to-cal...

2) https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-...

I've been using GAE for a while now starting from when they only supported Java and Python (I think). It's my go to source when I want to create an MVP or proof of concept. I've also used it to run some sites with medium traffic.

Over the years they've introduced a whole bunch of stuff/services, simplified a bunch of things (e.g. datastore pricing is now simpler).

They've also made things more complicated (in my opinion). Years ago, downloading and using GAE was straight forward. Now they have all sorts of versions (standard, flexible, etc) and running a program is no longer as simple as before.

Their documentation is also extremely poor and they sometimes change/remove services without enough notification (switching from modules to services, changing support for openID/Federated login even though it still showed up in GAE).

At the end of the day, I would still recommend it. It just takes more effort for me to explain to new folks how to use it.

If you use GAE, you get a free plan on SendGrid (up to a max) and I've used it to send mails to gmail and yahoo accounts. Don't recollect anyone ending up in spam but I haven't sent them in thousands. Will keep your comment in mind as I do so..

Reminds me of this -

https://twitter.com/ads_mdavn/status/890101529914560516

The first time I saw that the site was not a sub-domain of Equifax.com, I was worried that someone would quickly create a copy and I would mistakenly enter my information on the site.

Subsequently, each time I had to go to the site - to check if my data was hacked, to enroll for the TrustedID protection (had to try multiple times), I would always first go to equifax.com and then follow the links from there.

It's sad to see that my fears of the site being easily cloned is true (although this was a proof of concept to show Equifax that they were wrong but who knows if there isn't a real malicious site that had already collected people's information).

Not only can you not enroll immediately they tell you that . your data was stolen, even when you return on your given enrollment date, you don't get to complete it that same day. You still have to wait for a few more days to get an email.

Equifax has really really messed up. I hope the other companies are using this as a learning experience and are fixing any flaws they have.

This is welcome news. This means I no longer have to track and manually renew my Let's Encrypt certificates for my websites.

I also see it as a way to incentivize folks to use GAE (not only are you getting free quotas to run your app, you also don't have to spend money to buy certificates and don't have to worry about installing or renewing them).

Finally, I also see it as another way of pushing for the uptake of SSL. With GAE doing this, other hosting services might also start offering something similar or close to it which would then beg the question - why is your site not using SSL.