extragood

I kinda glossed over the interview structure for the sake of brevity, but they do speak to one technical person (me) before the tech assessment. I'm the hiring manager, and I see my primary role as getting the candidate excited for the position and to answer any initial questions. I've already narrowed down the applicant pool through resume review at that stage, so most people make it to the technical assessment from there. I feel like technical assessment shouldn't come too much later in the process: we're trying to be respectful of time on both sides, and while the assessment is 2 hours long, it's only completed once by the candidate, whereas if we have the technical interviewer come earlier on in the process, it will add many more hours across candidates who would have otherwise been filtered out.

As far as using 3rd party solutions: I see your point, and actually used to administer homespun "code challenges". The downside with that approach is that it adds a ton of overhead. As terrible as it may seem, we may not be able to invest that kind of time unless we're willing to be more heavy-handed in candidate selection early on. In at least one case, there was a candidate who had a fairly unremarkable resume but really impressed us in the interview process, and they may have been eliminated earlier on if we were more selective from the beginning.

Late last year we had a candidate who seemed really promising: she had a CS degree from an Ivy League school and had a few years of work experience using relevant technologies.

She absolutely killed the Byteboard technical assessment, and seemed like a good cultural fit during my initial screen. I advised the technical interviewer that he didn't need to go too deep; I was satisfied with her answers on the technical assessment. Then something odd happened - she completely bombed the interview. The interviewer told me that she couldn't even answer the most basic questions e.g. "what tech stack does your employer use?" I was thoroughly confused about that, but still passed her on to the VPE to help us get to the bottom of the discrepancy. Our VPE confirmed the previous technical interviewer's assessment.

We came to the conclusion that she could not have completed the technical assessment on her own and obviously didn't move forward from there.

> Wilson said it's rare for the grown pupfish to die in these events, but said park rangers will continue to provide supplemental feedings for the fish, which have seen resurgence in its population in recent years.

I'm not an environmental expert by any stretch of the imagination, but it strikes me as harmful to intervene in a largely isolated environment like this.

It feels that way sometimes! I like to (jokingly) say it's my biggest character flaw.

That can be said of literally any food. For instance, I hate chocolate. And upon learning that, people will sometimes tell me, "oh, you must be thinking of /American/ chocolate. You'll like /real/ chocolate". Nope. I've humored enough people and sampled various combinations of cacao, milk, dark, Belgian, Swiss, and so on. I don't like chocolate.

I was thinking along those lines, yeah. Extrapolating that out, I can imagine a future where writing is the only form of language. It'd make for some interesting dystopian fiction, if nothing else.

I'd be interested in some formal studies as well. My thoughts aren't well researched or anything. Just ideas.

> Captions can also facilitate multitasking

I have a hard time believing this. Captions demand more attention if anything. I can passively "watch" a video by only listening to the audio, but I can't passively read.

I think that the phenomenon described in the article may actually be a symptom of a much deeper social change. Listening and auditory comprehension were critical skills for communication and preservation of knowledge in prehistory. Spoken word is inherently ephemeral. As civilizations developed or adopted writing systems, and the population became increasingly literate, text supplanted spoken communication and oral history in many areas. There are many obvious benefits to that change, but I believe that we also inadvertently sacrificed our listening and auditory comprehension skills in the process over many generations.

Text messaging/SMS is increasingly preferred to phone calls, with many of the younger generations experiencing high levels of anxiety if they're required to call someone.

This is completely anecdotal, but I've also observed several others who are unable to follow verbal navigation instructions - either spoken from another person or even live step by step instructions from a navigation app. They only feel confident if there's a visual representation.

I think we've mistakenly classified that behavior as having a "visual learning style", when it is more accurately the result of our species losing its ability to process auditory language.

My teams' weekly syncs take a similar format to this.

At a high level, the structure for the larger team (10, full remote):

* 3-5 minutes unstructured social banter * 5-10 minutes general team update * 10 minutes individual updates * 5 minutes review recent releases and new bugs

We've followed that format for years, and I think one of the greatest things I did is guarantee that I'm not talking at them for the full 30 minutes. In fact, each person contributes for at least a minute in their individual update. I'll often have someone else talk about something they've been working on as the general team update, and always have the person who identified a bug talk us through it. As the host, I only need to come up with a few minutes of content per week and keep the flow of the meeting going.

The one point from the article that I disagree with (at least in the context of my meetings) is the necessity of strict timing. Some meetings only need to be 20 minutes, and I'm not going to artificially extend it if it isn't necessary. Others go over time by a few minutes, and while some people may need to drop early, the meeting is recorded and agenda/notes are published so they can be easily referenced as necessary.

It should be rebranded as crypto speculative investment given how infrequently it's actually used as currency.

"What is an API?" is one of my favorite interview questions.

Your answer gets full points. Partial credit for knowing what the initialism stands for, and having some valid explanation in the context of HTTP.

As another example, one of my internships involved development of software patches so that the company's software could interact with various electron microscopes via their proprietary APIs.

My brother had this opportunity in a public elementary school. "Mrs. F" was the teacher for the same group of students for 2 or 3 consecutive years. It was very much an experiment, but by all accounts it was a success.

I recognize that this is just an anecdote, and there is the potential to get stuck with a bad teacher as other commenters have pointed out, but at least in his case, it was an overwhelmingly positive experience. I wish that I'd had the same opportunity.

The class formed an especially close bond with each other and the teacher, and that led to some really unique extracurricular activities. At that age, parents are often still very involved in their children's education, and Mrs. F was able to form relationships with the parents as well, allowing the class and their families to go on special weekend camping trips, visit museums, participate in science competitions, among other things.

Years later, many of them still keep in touch, and I think just about everyone involved went on to higher education, many at very prestigious schools.

On my on-going list of terrible ideas is a restaurant that recreates the airline dining experience. Good to know it'd have at least one devoted customer

I was tempted to respond that having children is a lifestyle choice (one that not everyone gets, mind you), but I suppose where you live is a lifestyle choice too. It's just frustrating to have the rules change after you've already committed to living in the expensive place.

Is your cost of living anywhere close to what it would be in SF?

The average 1 bedroom apartment costs $3,060/month [1] or $36,720/year. The tax rate is high, and depending on where in the world you are, there are additional expenses such as healthcare that need to be factored in as well.

If we're only concerned with fairness in compensation, cost of living must be a factor.

[1] https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/san-francisco-ca

It seems counterintuitive from the employer's perspective though in many cases.

The best argument I found is that it expands the hiring pool. I think there's some issues in practice long-term with that argument, but regardless, they are voluntarily spending more on compensation for existing employees without getting any additional value out of it.

Michael Pollan advocates for this in his book, "In Defense of Food" [1], and to a lesser degree in "The Omnivore's Dilemma". The big take-away for me was (paraphrased) that ethnic cuisines worldwide built and supported civilizations over many generations. It's only been over the past couple generations that we've been able to deviate from traditional cooking, with the globalization and industrialization of our food supply, and that's led to poor eating habits. It's especially pronounced in the US because we have a pretty short and heterogeneous cultural history and identity. He basically advocates choosing an ethnic cuisine and sticking with it.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/315425.In_Defense_of_Foo...

Agreed. We can't ignore that in many cases, students are in competition with each other for grades. If there's a reasonable assumption that the others have an unfair advantage, you're really not left with an alternative other than to cheat yourself. I think it's fair to compare it to the prevalence of adderall at universities.

I took some graduate courses in an online environment back when that was a relatively new concept in the late 2000s. Everything up until the midterm and final exam were online, and I had to physically go to a designated test area for those. I felt reasonably assured that everyone else was being held to the same standard.

I found this really insightful as someone who runs a small consultancy/professional services department within a larger company. I agree with a lot of what he's written (some terminology aside), but we have different perspectives on billing.

My department's engagements are exclusively 'fixed-bid projects'. Truth be told, I'd prefer hourly billing as it reduces our risk. There is an omnipresent danger that we've horribly under-estimated the effort required to deliver a project, but the customer isn't concerned about that. They are interested in minimizing their own risk. And the fixed bid is a guarantee of X results for $Y, which has more safeties in place. I suppose that's why the author has to explicitly spell out how to fire him.

That was my thought too. It seems like it could provide all the benefits that we get with multiple individual lenses for telephoto, wide-angle, etc in a single lens and sensor. Probably reduces cost overall.

There's an interesting argument in 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind' [1] that capitalism is primarily responsible for the Enlightenment period in Europe. By the same token it may also be associated with some of the worst aspects of (relatively) recent history, such as colonialism and the slave trade.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23692271-sapiens

This is supported by a great book by Jeff Hawkins (Palm Computing/Handspring founder), [On Intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Intelligence) (2004).

It's been a decade+ since I read through it, so my memory is a little fuzzy, but my take away was: humans are hardwired for pattern recognition. Pattern identification improves our mental model of the universe. We use that model to predict things about the future. Making accurate predictions about the future is intelligence.

The article seems to completely ignore one simple thing that guarantees that Apple Maps can never fully compete with Google Maps: Apple Maps is only available on Apple devices. Today, iOS represents 27.5% of all mobile users, meaning that the best they can hope for is 1/3 market share. That assumes that Apple doesn't make any radical changes to their closed ecosystem philosophies.

The Dell is 37% thinner than the Mac at the tallest point:

* Macbook Air 2020: 0.16–0.63 inch (0.41–1.61 cm) [1]

* Dell XPS 13 2019: 0.3"- 0.46" (7.8mm – 11.6mm) [2]

[1] https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/

[2] https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-laptops-and-notebo...

This is a subject that's very near and dear to my heart.

At its core, it's the alignment between customer experience and product. Support as the customer facing representatives need to be empowered to convey the shortcomings of the product as it impacts customer experience. The product team in turn should then digest that information and relay it to the people building the product, the engineers in this case.

Good alignment/synergy etc. between those teams leads to good customer experience.

My support team calls it "support deflection" (in terms of how it impacts support). "Upstream solution" (from the article) is roughly equivalent, from a different perspective.

The challenge that we face as support professionals becomes existential, once we've mastered deflection. As the article points out, it is very hard to measure that type of success.

The less reliance customers have on support, the less important support is to the company's success. The less important support is to the company's success, the less support is valued.

If fewer support requests come in for an extended period, then the support team will be downsized.

If a company is around long enough, surely undervaluing support services will likely catch up with them as new features and eventually new products are rolled out, and support professionals can only hope that executives are far-sighted enough to recognize that.

The problem that I've been stuck on for a while is how to align company interests with the support team's best interests, long term. Solving customer problems "upstream" is essentially fighting against ourselves.

A close family friend is a recently retired federal judge, about that age, maybe a little older. He and his family are some of the unpretentious, intelligent people that I've met. He said the exact same thing.

Our VP of Sales has an interesting reaction to every large deal won: "We could have asked for more"

Winning (i.e. meeting the stated goal) every time means that the boundaries of what is possible haven't been explored.

> At last count, more than 12 percent of Americans ages 12 and older were taking antidepressants. The chemical-imbalance theory, like the revamped DSM, may fail as science, but as rhetoric it has turned out to be a wild success.

This has always been my issue with psychology. It is inherently unscientific. Given the preponderance of reported mental conditions, it's also insufficient.

My experience is that the patient is asked a series of incredibly open ended questions. I was struck with the sheer variety of ways that I could respond. And depending on my response, I would receive a diagnosis.

The following were my diagnoses from 3 different psychiatrists: Attention Deficit, Seasonal Affective Disorder, Bipolar disorder.

There was absolutely no consensus, and it's no wonder. Years later a doctor made the connection between chronic pain (Crohn's disease) and my lack of energy.

I had been consuming anti-psychotics purely because of how I answered "How are you feeling today?" and other similar open ended questions in the wrong way.

At that point I worked to improve my chronic pain condition, which was of course the actual issue.

Neuroscience is the way forward to understanding mental disorders. In the meantime, great care should be taken around psychology. The effect of an uninformed approach can be devastating.

> 4. Dentist

That profession historically is also toward the top of suicide lists.

Me too. The solution is to live close to work/easy transportation..

According to Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics", happiness is the greatest good in life.

The pursuit of a meaningful life puts way too much pressure on identifying what is meaningful and worth our energies. That would probably decrease my happiness.

What if I can't find any pursuit that I consider to be the most meaningful? Am I OK committing to something that could potentially be less than optimal in terms of meaningfulness?

It isn't that important for me to evaluate my actions on meaningfulness - I'm bound to disappoint my self by that metric.

Prioritizing meaningfulness over happiness is putting the cart before the horse, in my mind.