What is the skillset they're looking for that would be proven out by having worked remote before?
225 karma · joined July 25, 2008
Living your best life, and achieving your own goals, doesn't mean ignoring everyone else in the world's well-being (for most values of "your own goals" and "your best life").
In ReCAPTCHA, the two-word CAPTCHA version, one of the two words is taken from a scanned book. That (unknown) word was one that failed OCR for that book.
The other word is one that captcha already knows the answer to.
The assumption is if you get the known captcha correct, then you probably got the other one correct as well (if it was possible to read it). The answer to the unknown word supplements the OCR of the book.
The captchas are put in random order, and you only have to get one of them right.
Luis's thought was that people are wasting all this time doing captcha - why not use that time to do something useful, like help digitize books.
As an aside, he's also one of the principal people behind duolingo, which is a quite awesome language learning / human-assisted translation engine.
Much more interesting to discuss that than how clear Buffett's argument is. (Which is quite clear, in my opinion.)
I tell my wife, "You know what, it's not fair that Bill pays so much all the time. I should pay more."
My wife then says, "Your argument is confusing, and what's more, it's feel-good bullshit. You didn't give me a specific number on how many dollars you'd want to pay. Would you pay with a credit card? Traveler's Cheque? Based on total after tip or before?"
The supposition between reasonable people should be that I pay some reasonable amount more than I have been paying, but I don't go over the top and foot the entire bill. Is it fair to ask how much more I'd be paying? Of course, and the final justification of just how fair the arrangement is would depend on that number, as you've said. However, it's perfectly reasonable to say someone should be paying more, and have a discussion on that topic, without having to go deep into the specifics of how much more.
You also said "His real argument is probably too snooty of an argument to make in print, but something tells me that's what he's really getting at. I wished he'd have just come out with it, though. It would have been a lot more honest."
This strongly implies that the author (Buffett) is dishonest in his arguments. I'd say that's calling him out.
That is his recommendation. Is it not specific enough?
To address this particular article: the writing is all over the place. First paragraph: he doesn't like science when it's a "club to beat up people you simply disagree with." Well, good, reproducible scientific results can indeed be used as a "club" to beat up ideas that are wrong. It's one of the best uses of science. Now my assumption (from reading further) is he hates bad science. Which I actually agree with, but that is not stated up front.
From the fourth paragraph. "...science is the beautiful application of reason and logic that slowly and inexorably moves from ignorance to truth." The next paragraph says "Bullshit." What's bullshit about it? That is indeed how good science should work.
Then he goes on to talk about scientists who speculate outside either their area of expertise, or outside scientifically produced results.
Later he says "It needs to be clear when reporting medical studies what types of methods were used...". Here's the deal: it is clear. It's clear in reputable scientific journals. Read by scientists that can actually make sense of that kind of information. And even then, as a reader, you have to use critical thought to mentally junk studies that don't follow appropriate methods. Reading the most reputable peer-reviewed journals is a start, but you can't shut your brain off while reading even those.
If he's talking about newspaper reporting about science, yes, it's frequently wrong, because it's written by non-scientists. As an exercise, read a regular newspaper article about anything you have deep knowledge in. I'll bet you find many problems with it based on the lack of understanding of the reporter.
In his last paragraph, his conclusion seems to be that scientists should do good science, and not bad science. Again, this is what peer-reviewed journals contribute greatly to. It's not a "totally new way of doing things". Not even close.
For web software, you indeed want your test environment to be no faster than production, so it can be slower (within reason), especially if you have a hard time simulating in test loads you expect to see in production.
In many cases you DO have a direct choice on which of the items (column A or B) to focus your efforts on. You can tell your developers to focus on writing code, or write control gate documentation. You can spend your time as a manager working on procuring the next new silver bullet tool, or on hiring, retaining, and working with top talent. Now there's nothing that says you can't do both, but you certainly have a choice on how much time and effort to spend on each.
As far as a sales slogan goes, yes, the manifesto is the headliner for the books and coaches and everything else that costs money in the writing and consulting world that is selling methodology silver bullets. But you can use the ideas in the manifesto without spending one thin dime on any of that stuff.
Each statement is giving you information. "When faced with one of these two things to concentrate on, we suggest you concentrate on the first one." That information might be obvious to you as an expert, but is non-obvious to some people, including many decision makers that don't develop software on a day-to-day basis.
Is it an exact recipe to follow? Nope, but neither is development an exact science, or something you can do by rote following of a checklist. Which is exactly the point of the first item in the manifesto, incidentally.