deltaoneseven

> No, I'm not an x-ray operator, but I work in health care and have good knowledge of what it costs to run a hospital in America.

That's the key word. "In America," and nowhere else on the face of the entire earth. You are one component of a criminally corrupt system. By being a component, you are shielded from full responsibility. It's like being a shareholder of a corrupt company. Same thing.

>if you haven't done that, I'm not sure you have the experience to say how much an x-ray should cost.

>I am not arguing that $69K is a reasonable expense for a routine x-ray.

Don't try to change the topic. You were saying that I am not justified to know how much an x-ray should cost. I'm saying I am justified, and that YOU are the beneficiary of said high costs and THEREFORE YOU are actually unqualified to justify ANYTHING related to this.

Let's say the cost is 5k. It's still a criminal rip off. Also who is making up that BS number 69k? Which industry is making up that number and for what insidious purpose? I'll tell you the answer. Your industry: The American medical industry. You.

Don't come on this site and tell me I'm not justified in saying something is a complete rip off when you're part of the industry taking advantage of peoples lives.

Not worked up. Just stating the facts. Don't understand how his twitter invalidates the fact?

No exact answers exist but probabilities are very real.

3 people being simultaneously not fit for the job is quite unlikely.

You have a choice here. Either 1 person is unfit for the job or 3 people. 1 person being unfit though not for sure is Far more likely.

By one person I mean the manager is not fit. But in these cases usually the manager side steps the numbers and thinks he's doing the right thing.

The first thing wrong with the system is that number. 69k. Even if nobody paid 69k. Who made up that BS number and for what insidious purpose?

I know dog shit isn't worth 69k and nobody needs to acquire a dog shit maker, and operate a dog shit maker nor pay for the staff making a dog shit maker to know that dog shit isn't worth 69k. Basic common sense.

Maybe the above is a bad analogy. Put it this way.

I've been to hospitals outside of the US and paid for x-ray services. That's how I know. That's how Everyone knows ...

69k a crime.

What I don't understand is why there exists someone defending something so obvious. Are you an X-ray operator?

I have been a manager and I've realized that a huge portion of it is a communication problem. Not all of it but a big portion of it and not many managers realize this.

When I was a new manager I noticed an employee that would just get everything wrong and do things with a low amount of quality.

Turns out the problem was with me. As a new manager I failed to communicate and define objectives clearly. I simply assumed such things were obvious. The employee assumed different things and as a result his work output and what I expected were mismatched.

After some time reviewing my own behavior I began spending a huge amount of time defining and planning out the scope of the project at hand. I take the time to make sure that objectives and what's needed are completely clear. When I did this the employee in question delivered beyond expectations.

Turns out this guy was a literal technical genius and that his performance problems were largely communication problems on my part. The guy can literally solve technical issues no other engineer can solve and could finish his tasks twice as fast.

Other high performing employees I realized weren't necessarily technically advanced. They were just better at predicting and meeting my expectations and that was the key. They were managing me, and I wasn't doing any management.

If I hadn't reviewed my own behavior I would've went down the wrong road of firing a technically superior engineer while only keeping the people that could "manage up" better.

I will say that there are tons and tons of managers who don't realize this and even adopt a philosophy around managing as little as possible. What these managers don't know is more than likely they are letting go of engineers who are not only technically competent but technically superior by subconsciously pre-selecting for people who are better at predicting what you want rather then people who are technical wizards. You can recognize these types of managers as they have a bias for certain types of engineers who take "ownership" of something or essentially manage a product so you don't have to. These people are good people to hire but at the same time this philosophy is not scalable.

There are places for both types of people in a company and a company does worse if it only has one type.

This is really vile. You realize the what you're doing to someone when you fire them?

Personally I think people with your style of personality aren't suited to be managers.

To the other replier: it's definitely not sarcasm.

No there are alternatives. You support the team switch before termination. Termination is a last resort option and should only be done after multiple people managed the person directly to remove bias.

I've seen a scenario where 2 people at anduril (where I work) were fired in 6 months and 1 person quit to get away from the manager. Statistically in this case it's a managerial problem and you need to place those employees in different teams to know that it's the manager that's the problem and not the employee.

Simply assuming the employee is the problem without additional oversight is the wrong path.

This is done because when employees are let go they could become potentially hostile to the company. That's why they don't inform people beforehand of the firing.

What should absolutely be done is inform him of the exact performance problem and steps to improve. An actual well intended PIP and not just a way to throw someone out.

This. Getting fired is largely a perception thing as much as it is performance.

How your manager perceives you and his ability to perceive things and his personality influences everything.

The article fails to address when the firing is actually wrong and incorrect.

I work at anduril and I know of a new manager who 6 months into the job fired 2 people and had one person quit because he couldn't handle dealing with him.

The manager obviously is blind to see the statistical significance of that many people gone in 6 months. He likely views it as a performance problem of 3 people rather then the more likely 'him' problem.

Keep in mind if you're fired it has hugely to do with the perspective and the personality of the people judging your work. Sometimes that judgement is valid, but just as often it is not valid at all. Additionally keep in mind the political motivations and machinations going on in the background. Along with firing people for political reasons... Many people not suited to be managers.

If you find yourself in that situation where you are fired do not ignore the reasoning behind why your manager fired you but also be sure to weigh it against many other opinions because often your manager is making an unjustified decision.

A lot of the stories in this article are justified though. One person was judged and placed under several people so they could all make an accurate assessment before piling the plug.

The author is a female with chosen gender of male.

Its actually even worse if he was a man. He's a man attacking men and overreacting to something that obviously was much less likely to be a threat. Its a man touching another dudes shoulder, why threaten to throw him out of the car? My statement still stands regardless of this persons sex.

Agreed, but I would go further to say that the type system and immutability helps in the area you describe as well: "or where you failed to predict some sequence of actions and account for it correctly."

Basically immutability serves to create more invariants and reduce complexity of the program such that it is much more predictable.

I'm advocating exactly your conclusion hence the reason why I specified that immutability is the keyword, not monads and other advanced concepts associated with functional programming.

Believe it or not the language you use influences the amount of bugs in the system.

Also your programming technique and style of programming influences the amount of bugs.

Generally to reduce bugs, go with a functional programming style and make sure the language has robust type checking. Functional has a bad connotation in some circles so another way to think about it is to use immutable variables as much as possible. Avoid mutation wherever you can.

This is the first step. The next steps are testing and QA, but most teams have that side covered.

It's talking about idealistic foundations. The idea that software being a theoretical language with a well defined domain and codomain can be written with zero bugs and zero testing to catch those bugs. Zero bug code is written utilizing the tools of math, such as axioms, theorems, and logic to derive zero bug code without the need to utilize engineering principles. (I'm exaggerating a bit with the word "zero", "nearly zero" is more accurate, but too wordy)

In practice we try to eliminate bugs in software engineering by doing testing as if software was some material with unknown properties. This method is easy to understand but ultimately has it's weaknesses as tests only prove a program works for a single test. This is the "foundation" most engineers are use to.

As I stated previously, the "foundation" these book refer to are an idealism involving proving an entire program to be bug free without running it or testing it. Hence this is the reason why it's so foreign to you. You're likely use to software from a testing perspective.

Vestiges of this "foundation" have leaked into the common practice of software engineering. It's called type checking. In type checking your computer uses a similar method to guarantee your program has zero type bugs. It doesn't run any type testing, it literally just proves that your program is type safe and correct.

I don't see his way of viewing numbers as particularly efficient. It's very inn-efficient. It's an anomaly for sure but I would hesitate to call it a talent or super human ability.

I would argue his way of thinking of numbers makes him slower at doing calculations.

When you create a 2D visual representation of a number system you want to choose a shape that has the same properties as numbers. Namely the shape must be monoidal under composition. This allows you to keep one type of shape

For example (int + int = int). When you compose two triangles together you get a parallelogram, so triangles are actually kind of bad as you would need to classify several different types as numbers. (triangle + triangle = parallelogram) The only shape that I can think of that is monoidal under arithmetic composition is rectangular quadrilaterals with at least two parallel sides.

Examples: Rectangles, parallelograms, and trapezoids each can be composed to form another shape in its own class. With rectangles likely being the most efficient representation as they are fully symmetrical (to compose two trapezoids to form a new trapezoid one trapezoid has to be inverted, this does not happen with rectangles).

So his even number visual representation is quite good (it uses blocks) but his odd number representation is all over the place and seems arbitrary. Just look at 9. It involves "orange peeling" another number just to shove it into the little dent. His system involves mutating, rotating and changing the shape of each "number" in order to perform composition. This costs more "brainpower" to do and is the main reason why I don't classify his ability as a "gift".

It's highly inefficient. I think many HNers are mistaking it for a super human ability. I don't agree. This is more of an interesting ability then it is a talent.

But that's just a guess. Would actually like to see a quantitative measure of how fast he is at adding numbers under his system. This would definitively answer the question.