aroundtown

This completely ignores the why somebody is unmotivated.

I remember being beat down very early in my career. I took advanced math classes, could build compilers, loved embedded device work, wanted to work on more advanced things (operating system level, backend, devices, etc). The only people that would even talk to me were people that wanted web pages built. All because I wasn't fortunate enough to go to a big name school or any education beyond a BS.

Often the only motivation I had at that point was to not starve. But after working for an abusive boss and 2.5 bad companies. I was burned out, used up, and left with nearly zero motivation.

I've worked with enough disgruntled employees to know that many of them would anything to hurt their company, even if there was no compensation for them. The secret is to hit them at a low point in their day.

I wouldn't mind more walkable if it didn't come at the cost of being around many more people.

Every walkable city I've been to is either filthy, cramped, loud, over run, and/or very very expensive. I don't want to live so close to people to hear them, smell them, or be bothered by them or their pets.

You know what helps:

1. Stop being passive aggressive about being interrupted.

2. Take notes.

Dealing with [1]: it is ok, to interrupt some one who starts talking to you, tell them "Hang on", "Just a minute", "Come back in an hour". You have to put your foot down if you are working, even with bosses.

Note taking[2]: early in my career I kept too much information in my head, including debugging. Life is so much better with notes. Nowadays, I work problems out on the paper and not in my head. It's harder to start doing, but once you start you have a paper trail of where you have been and where you are going. Sometimes, you do need to drop everything and go be part of the action. When that happens, notes will get you back where you were quickly.

> Everyone should know that the requirements in job listings are almost always guidelines

In my experience job requirements are used to weed out and reject those that the hiring people don't like for reasons other than ability.

This ranges from excluding women, being only inclusive of women, only hiring a certain races or religions, or justifying the use of work visas. I've even seen it used to justify not hiring someone because of their accent.

It is too common to see the well off capitalists extol the virtues of hard work, usually as a means unto itself, ignoring the reward.

They often say, you peasants could be like me if only you understood how to work hard, while completely ignoring the fact that not everybody is fairly compensated for their hard work.

I wish I was in such a good position that I could spend 5 hours a day writing about whatever self-indulgent topics I'm feeling while being able to pat myself on the back and call it a hard days work.

I've been laid off more times due to outsourcing than I'd like to admit.

That premium for me is going to be higher than they imagine.

Among my coworkers I have an average commute time, and I loose 10-12 hours a week driving to and from work. I figure if I was being paid at my normal rate they'd need to pay me between 25-45%[1] more money just to come in.

[1]- Used to be that workers weren't exempt from overtime pay. At time and a half, 12 extra hours over 40 would be the equivalent of 18 hours. That is 45% of a normal 40 hour work week. (10 hours at non-overtime pay is 25% of the work week)

If you don't have access to a college counselor or someone doing a similar job, that is still an opportunity you don't have.

The internet helps as long as you have something to look for. If you don't know you are lacking knowledge/information, the the internet isn't going to help you find it.

Improving access to education is not enough.

You have to improve opportunity.

For example, I grew up extremely poor, and went to a small school. The most my parents knew about college was that I was going to go to one. Now I had the intelligence to get into just about any school I wanted, but I had no idea what/where those schools were. I also was unaware of how scholarships worked, or that I could have afforded most schools because we were poor. So I didn't apply to the few dream schools I knew of (MIT, Harvard, and Yale were the only big schools I knew about).

I applied and was accepted to two state schools in my region and went to one of those. My partner is appalled at the lack of opportunities I had growing up. No amount of money at the time would have fixed the situation, only moving to an area with better opportunities for me would have.

It was only a way to move up into and through the middle class. It was never a ticket to any place else. The reason is simple, lack of opportunity. Sometimes opportunity is money, privilege, or luck. Sometimes it's being at the right place at the right time, befriending the right person at a party, or working together on a group project.

Every entrepreneur that I have known has come has some sort of privilege to get them where they are. One, not only had moderately wealthy parents, but those parents raised him inside of a successful store. From a young age he was taught how to make a venture work, he had a fall back if he failed, and he had people to call if he needed advice. Because of the opportunities they had in life, they believe that it was all hard work and intelligence that got them there.

My best friend from grade school was very wealthy. My friend has had more opportunities in life, just because their parents could float them while they took unpaid internships, complete graduate school, and buy them a nice big house so they could settle down and start a family.

If you want a 'great equalizer' you have to provide opportunity to those that don't have it. You have to check your privilege at the door and consider for a moment that some people don't have it as good as you. You have to give people a chance to prove themselves.

Even in the US and in Tech, if you were raised or live outside of a major metro, you are at a significant disadvantage to those who had the luck to living in one. If we want to fix this, we have to prioritize giving more opportunities to those who don't have them.

Trustworthy and loyal friends and colleagues have been difficult for me to find. It seems that so many of us who struggle to get where we are pull up the ladder behind us instead of helping uplift each other.

Unfortunately for some of us, it seems like every place we go is toxic. I've had nothing but terrible experiences every place I have worked as a programmer. I've been out of the game for a bit because of health issues, but I do not look forward to trying to find work again. To be honest, I feel like that person who has been in so many abusive relationships that they give up on dating all together.

Give me a dedicated office with a door that can shut, allow me to commute during off-peak rush hours, and raise my pay or shorten my work hours for the same rate... then we will talk about coming back in.

Currently:

I have an dedicated office at home, I can shut my door and work when I need to be distraction free. I don't have my head pinched by headphones for hours, and I can work in silence like I prefer. No coworkers interrupting me when I'm in the zone.

I've saved between 8-10 hours per week in not commuting. Worse, I've had bosses who enjoy flexing by having meetings promptly at 8am, where you have to leave extra early because you travel at peak rush hour.

I don't have to keep up appearances when I'm done with my work for the day or moment. If I'm waiting for responses or reviews, I can veg out, watch Netflix or play a video game, while staying on top of my email and work load. I've also taken to getting some of my house work done during this time. Laundry, mowed grass, exercise, lots of little things that used to get stacked up on the weekend.

I never have to eat off my diet, or feign excuses for not wanting to eat another office provided carb loaded meal. I stock my own foods, and have a hot meal for lunch everyday.

Finally, I don't have to smell the 2 smokers that spend a couple of hours smoking every single day nor do I have to sit next to someone with questionable personal hygeine. Yes Richard, you smell awful, and stink up half the office with your body odor and cigarettes.

I'm always a little skeptical of someone who gets all their degrees from the same university, even it it is Stanford. They aren't exposed to as diverse of a group of thoughts and ideas as someone who goes else where and proves themselves to other people with differing opinions.

Yep. It happens.

Unfortunately not everyone is as lucky to be able to up and quit when these things happen.

* Visa holders are often susceptible to this kind of abuse. Low wages, can't job hop, etc.

* Those who are bound by health care. Being healthy isn't a privilege everyone enjoys.

* Those without safety nets. Not just people who grew up poor that have no place to turn if things get bad. This could be you if you live paycheck to paycheck. If you have to choose between being homeless and an abusive work place, most are going to take the abuse.

For every person that you hear mention that their workplace is great and wonderful, there is somebody else in the workforce who is suffering.

Wow that was neat to see him build and troubleshoot.

That said, I'm starting to have a problem with all these creator videos on youtube, and that is the fact they pay for so little of their stuff. It's frustrating to have to scrimp and save in hopes of buying a cool project like this to only see a video of someone get a bunch of them for free to make videos of them.

Your story sounds a lot like mine.

I'd say unless you have really experienced it first hand, or know someone who has, it is hard explaining to others how having a short stent of misfortune can really snowball and keep you down. As much as we hear the great fortune of those that get lucky at the right time, we never hear about those that miss out at the wrong time.

Real CS degree from a college of engineering at a large state university.

Obviously this isn't some top 40 program. Had I known then what I do now, I would have applied to some of those programs.

Back then, I wasn't aware of other programs or even names of universities known for computing (other than MIT). I came from a small town that didn't have many opportunities for kids interested in tech in the late 90's early 00's. So you pretty much went to one of the State Universities.

Certainly, what I mean here is people that have been helped out to get where they are, then not pay it forward or in fact go out of their way to not help out their peers.

I've seen this happen many times. Not just to friends, but co-workers and people that I have met along the way.

In one case I had a friend who was hired by a former classmate to a local firm. After a year there they started hiring more programmers company wide. This friend refused to interview people who had graduated from our department or pass along resumes. Instead they started hiring other people from non-engineering departments that they thought they could train to program. This guy is now a C-level and still refuses to hire people that graduated from our department.

I'd wager that it's just a feature of my particular network and people I've come across. As my partner is the opposite, and their network helps each other out.

I was in a medium sized city with college and engineering firms. I've moved to a major metro for my first job and then several times since for my partner, to non-tech heavy cities as their career is more specialized and isn't available everywhere.

Current city has repressed wages across the board. It's a place with a "low cost of living" and several universities that pump out local students who want to stay here at any cost and a very healthy foreign worker scene.

Currently, I'm willing to move.

One of those 30-40% checking in.

When I graduated with a CS degree in '07 (US) the first job offer I received was for $25k. I was so angry at that offer. I told the hiring manager that I couldn't possibly work for less than $35k they scoffed at that, I told them no thanks. I could make more money flipping burgers.

I kept looking for work.

Had another offer for $32k with one week of vacation a year, and no health care.

It took me over a year to land my first gig, only making $45k a year. No job since has paid me more.

I had phone interviews that last for less than two minutes because I didn't have industry experience when the posting clearly no experience needed/ will train.

I've had my time wasted by recruiters who send me to interviews that I'm not qualified for.

Interviewed with Amazon at one point, got invited to onsite interview, when my contact ghosted me while trying to arrange travel.

I've worked some programming jobs, all of them have been horrible in their own way. Alcoholics, cliques and fiefdoms, to being left to my own devices working alone often forgotten.

At this point my wife thinks its time for me to go back to school and get another degree, leave programming behind. I love computers. I'm a good programmer. I have no idea what I would do if I wasn't in technology.

What frustrates me the most, is the number of people I know in my personal life, that never got programming degrees that are now well paid programmers. All of them have degrees in non engineering fields, started non programming jobs that turned into programming jobs because they needed something coded up.

The second thing that frustrates me is the sheer number of people that I have interacted with that have pulled the ladder up behind them once they make it out.

It is frustrating knowing I am a good programmer and seeing bad programmers getting well paying jobs.

I guess where I'm trying to go with this, is that for some of us, we just can't seem to get ahead. Maybe we are just unlucky. Maybe we have been beaten down by the interview process or jobs and we don't want to deal with it anymore.

I know for a fact that had I just taken a regular 9-5 non-stem job I'd be ahead of where I am right now. And what scares me is the thought that if I keep trying, I might not ever do better in STEM.... I love STEM...

This isn't an apology, this is damage control.

The tone is all wrong. You don't "issue a public apology" you say "We apologize for ... " or "We are sorry for ...".

The good-ole be lucky story.

I know for me personally, when I was in high school nearly 20 years ago they didn't tell us anything about applying to colleges until late mid April before I graduated. This is typically months after most decent schools end their deadlines.

I am curious, were these jobs actually internships?

If so, were they unpaid?

How were you able to support yourself so young and inexperienced in the Valley?

What I learned from this article:

1. Privilege opens doors not available to others.

2. Those with privilege are often oblivious to the advantages they have.

Those are just adverbs. Poorly written adverbs.

My problem was learning how and why to do it. Most of the tutorials I've seen on the matter either test too trivially or too often.

But it also says a lot about the places that I've worked where shipping code and carving out domain knowledge for job security was seen as more important that actually doing a good job.

As one of those developers, the problem I face is learning how and why to write tests. Most of the tutorials I've read on the matter test things that are too trivial and test too often. It also doesn't help that the people I've worked with don't have a clue how to do it either or those that do it think that everybody should just get it and can't be bothered to explain it.