haylem

I've seen this, and I'd be lying if I couldn't recognize parts of my own story in there.

Your error is to assume it's necessarily by choice. You don't always want to do that. You take a job that pays the bills first. Then you are forced to change jobs, or keep doing the same job remotely (yes, that can happen for a variety of reasons. E.g. farawayfamily emergencies, and you either want to keep that job or they'd rather you work remotely rather than losing you).

I did this for 2.5 years, and it started great. But it went downhill. And I never went as low as the poor soul in there, but it definitely took a toll on me at some point. At some point I was in a small apartment with wife and 1.5kids, where my office was under a bed. It's obviously not a choice. Eventually we could afford to move to a bigger place and I had my own office, which improved things greatly, but we were also more remote, which didn't help. My distractions were grocery shopping for the family, and taking and getting my older kid to school. I also did that while parenting at the same time (1 entire year when my oldest was 3yo, and pretty much during the first 2.5y of my youngest. It's not a choice either.

Sure, I have the choice to quit, and I did, after 2.5y because I had the options I wanted. You do what you have to do before doing what you want to do.

That being said, working from home can be great. But the experience will depend on many things: your own discipline, the discipline of people living with you too (it took a year for my wife to understand that non-important queries could wait until the evening), the company culture (I was the only remote worker in a ~500 people world wide company), your location, etc...

I'll do it again if I get the chance, but only under specific conditions. It needs to be part of the company culture so that you don't feel left out from meetings and other people don't feel like you're slacking. Or that you don't feel like they feel you're slacking... perception goes meta quite easily. Because you're guilt-tripping yourself about being less included or less productive than others, you end up working way more than you should and usually would.

Not that I'd say my employer was at fault: it was extremely nice of them to allow me to work remotely (and in their interest too, granted), and they tried to accommodate for it, but if it doesn't fit it doesn't fit. I quickly lost influence in meetings and projets, my being remote made meetings more complicated for everybody on site, etc...

It's easier if you either live in a very remote place with nobody around (meaning that does not change your way of life at all) or in a very densely populated area (where you can easily go out, work from a different place, meet friends easily without commuting for 2 hours, go grocery shopping, etc...)

I'll add it wasn't my only remote experience: I also worked for other companies where the entire team was remote, but it was not necessarily better. Because, once again and quite strangely, it was NOT part of their culture. While all employees were remote and from several timezones (though not too far apart), expectations were not aligned with the reality.

I'd say company culture and your discipline are paramount. But you can only influence the latter easily. Other aspects also play a role, but these two are what will decide if it's even doable to work remotely for you.

The entire GitLab team is remote, as far as I understand their company model.

https://about.gitlab.com/2015/04/08/the-remote-manifesto/

But maybe you meant part-time?

> Installing databases is trivial, with any of `brew`, `yum`, or `apt-get`.

yes. For once database version and one single data set. If you handle multiple customers, multiple versions of a software suite to support which target specific versions of a DB, containers or VMs are handy.

I don't do my dev in a container. That always seemed stupid for me. But my dependencies are in containers.

Grace Hopper (grasshopper) popularizing bugs... Can't make this stuff up.

Yes

Update: my original answer was short because, well, I'm a sailor. But for more, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knot_(unit)

Interesting. That never bothered me, and I've reinstalled Plex quite a few times over the past 2 years. For me it's quick to setup and re-index, so I don't really see an issue with its own data getting lost, as long as it leaves my files alone.

I guess it's because I don't use (or see the need, really) for these features. I mean, I can remember fine what I've already seen and I don't mind clicking through to my next episode when I get back into Plex, and I don't really care to know what I've watched in the past, how many times, or how I rated it.

I'm more bothered by its DLNA server crashing, its occasional screw-ups with multi-audio or multi-subtitle containers, or it's failure to transcode some files (though most of these might be due to the receiver more than Plex).

I have to say, it's the first time I see a Peter Dinklage used as a unit of measure:

http://pascaleggert.de/EPIC_specifications.html

There's also the excellent http://www.nugs.net/.

Same here: I was reading and when I read the anecdote about a some basic concept being introduced only around page 216, I thought "hang on, I've read that before..."

And I had the same thought as back then, too: "Concepts, Techniques and Models of Computer Programming" also used this approach, except it's only after a few chapters that they teach you "oh by the way, Oz also supports for and while loops" whereas everything until now used recursion. All my eng school buddies found that off-putting, but I always thought that if you put the book in the hands of a completely newcomer to programmer, they would never even think of it.

(I know SICP predates CTM by decades and may not be considered in the same league, and that Mozart/Oz is rather more obscure that any lisp/scheme ever can be, but I consider it a fairly important book as well, and one of the best textbooks I've ever read: very well structured, well written, very complete, starts shallow but goes very deep and very wiiiiidddeee in terms of knowledge.)

Ah, I may have completely misunderstood the parent comment then. Indeed, have never used these, in any country so far.

Neat.

That's really not limited to France though. I've seen the same at Tesco, Waitrose and Saintsbury in the UK, in several chains in China, in a bunch of Germany as well (Aldi?), and in Australia (Whoolworths, Coles...). Ikea has had that for a while as well. So has Metro all over the world, obviously.

I have been using self-service checkouts for more than a decade in most countries. I'd be surprised if that was considered news.

Amazon Go and instant payment systems are a different topic entirely though.

Also, "very fast" is debatable: it's often broken, and some items are subject to different buying conditions and can't be purchased via these self-service checkout lanes, like alcohol, or "luxury" items with high margins, like razor blades.

Quite often, if given the choice of an almost empty till queue or a self-service line, I'll pick the almost empty till queue. It's often more efficient.

Self-service is great for 24/7 supermarkets though. I remember really huge Tesco stores in the UK that are but where you can shop at 3AM and use the self-service. Most employees at this time of night are the stock management people, and there's only one or 2 cashiers left (and security, obviously). The rest is self-service. For that scenario, it's indeed convenient.

Doesn't really fade me. I mean, it's just for the duration of the exam. Install on a throwaway laptop, do your interview, be done with it.

It's not so much the recording of these metrics that I'd be worried about, but them storing it to build profiles. Different story.

These particular metrics are now quite common for online exam systems.

Mind you, these are valid concerns, and anyone should feel free to reject them. But on the other hand it's nice to have a remote option (for certifications, exams, interviews...) and at the same time a cheat-prevention system.

You'd be creeped out by the stories I have of freelancers or even consulting companies having some "star" employees doing interviews and then other employees showing up at work instead (remotely or even physically). Once you've been burned by stuff like that, you understand they take precautions.

In OPs position, I'd ask for the storage and retention terms and conditions though.

Regarding the beginning of your answers: note that nowhere in my comment did I make an assumption about the distribution of the TOR users by use-case. I spoke of the original intent. I don't really care what the vast majority of users use it for and in what context. I care about its original goals.

Regarding needing more than TOR, not necessarily so. There are many oppressive states (on different points of a large spectrum, from basic censorship to actual physical oppression), and though we read many stories about their crackdowns on privacy rights and monitoring facilities, very often we over-estimate their capabilities (e.g. the GFW of China is rather sad joke, technically speaking). So if you're not your state's Public Enemy Number 1, you're within a risk range that's most likely acceptable using TOR, so long as you use it correctly and carefully (and that you accept that risk...). Basically, it boils down to what you said: "if they do care enough to come for you, and they have the resources".

Indeed, I was also probably a bit over-simplistic in my previous answer: there are different leagues with different ball-games.

For the rest, we're in agreement.

You look at this from the privacy perspective of someone who wants to hide something within the constraints and confines of a working - and at least somewhat ethical - legal and judiciary framework.

The original use case for Tor is for people who actually need to be able to use the net and hide. If their location and they get it with the equivalent of their local government's "search warrant", it's more likely a raid, interrogation, threats, harassment, censorship, and possibly torture and death.

It's a whole different ball-game.

I've said it in the other thread where you mentioned it the other day, and I'll say it again: this is an awesome service!

And thanks so much for sharing the source on GitLab to reproduce it.

Really great work!

Actually I just noticed that your repo is available. Awesome!

Spamnesty is nothing short of amazing! :)

I hope you'll also distribute the code so hopefully anyone not necessary trusting your service to not harvest email addresses or resell them (or get hacked) would be able to deploy that on a custom server.

In any case, was very fun to read.

There's also always this, which I found pretty cool and somewhat functional as well, though it goes beyong the bare "emacs on a kernel" concept:

http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/new-window-manager....

I one had a VM at a workplace where all I had were outdated hardware specs and outdated versions of Windows with few administrative privileges. It helped to retain some sanity. For some time.

You're mistaken. A lot of businesses in many countries use .com addresses even for their local shops.

For one othing, .com stands for "commercial". .us is for USA.

Regarding whether it's right to do so or not is another question. For starters, it depends on the regulations of each country, as in some of them you simply are not allowed to operate under a different TLD. But most countries are not this restrictive.

One of the many things that were supposed to "make sense" at the dawn of the web, and that were quickly abused and evolved into more than what anyone could possibly have thought of at first. (No, no, I'm not thinking of HTTP at all while writing this. Why would I?)

The "Estonian Cyberwar" is also described in Fred Kaplan's "Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War" [1] as one of the defining moments of the coming of age of international cyber offense and defense, and as one of the turning points of the power grab by the NSA on the cyber security issues.

Interesting read. I find the way the book is structured quite unwelcoming and hard to digest (too many timeline jumps), but it's packed with interesting information.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Territory-Secret-History-Cyber/d...

Well, that's quite an underwhelming comment...

Yay, we can open a file!

I asked a few times to be allowed to lurk around the offices, either directly one the day of the interview, or for a day prior to my starting date (but after having signed a contract, though). Helps to get a feel of the place at least, if not necessarily of your day job (but obviously, looking at your future team's activity is recommended here).

Generally it was positively received, although in large companies there was some deflection with "non-issues", like:

- "oh but you know, our insurance does not cover for you being here" (oh yeah? So I was totally covered during the interview?) - "we'd need to notify security" (hmm, I'm already here) - "you know, everybody is probably too busy" (I'd hope so...) - "not sure where we'll put you" (and when I start in 2 weeks, if that desk hasn't appeared, I also don't show up?)

And even with these casual "non-issues", I actually never was denied this. Usually I stuck for one or 2 hours.

1 company let me stay for a day (they had flown me in for the interview and wanted me to stick around, which says a lot already).

Another one allowed me to attend an entire day of team meeting. After I had received a contract, but still, something like 2 months prior to my starting date. And that actually is what made me accept the offer as I hadn't signed it yet.

That, yes.

But also because a significant amount of even the day's top popular topics have in the end very little relevance and impact to most businesses.

Which doesn't mean it's not interesting, though.

> mostly here on HN

Which may or may not be an accurate depiction (as we read personal accounts and thoughts of the commenters) of a quite marginal subset of real-life IT-professionals.

I wouldn't worry too much about what's being said or not said on HN. There are great ideas and topics to be covered here for sure, but they're sprinkled on top of a giant cake made with 1-part self-loathing, 2-parts day-dreaming, and 1-part regular huff-and-puffing.

It makes for good entertainment and procrastination.

> No idea what they mean, this books sounds great to me

That being said, not knowing Big-O while doing CS or IT work seems worrying. Sure, it's not absolutely necessary for most of the grunt work. But you should definitely have the same understanding of performance issues without knowing the fancy notation and terminology. Big-O is just a notation and a formalization of these concepts, and it helps with communication. I'd say it's still better to know it.

So, indeed the book probably doesn't hurt.

I think you underestimate the complexity of things that happen under the hood or simply out of sight: back-office apps, integration systems for data import/export, backups, alerting. I'm not so familiar with Yelp, but I'd bet they're interfacing with a crap load of additional stuff, including probably in-house tools to follow leads, facilitate reviews, handle their ad programs, etc...

I've commonly seen codebases explode the 1M LoC mark. Not necessarily for a single component, but if you have multiple systems interfacing with each other it's really quite common for business applications. That's obviously excluding libs.

Frameworks are a bit responsible for this in my opinion (note: not saying frameworks are bad, but it's a side-effect), as you'd often either have some additional configuration, boilerplate code, or generated code.

Also, it your application is long-lived (think decades), it's even less surprising: new engineers come and go, and it gets harder and harder to touch the things that were maintained by the previous key-holders... So you had a new stone here and there, polish a turd here and there, but you don't really untangle the mess that sits right at the middle, because it's just way too dangerous (or so you think). And it goes on and on. And it's aggravated by the fact that, as the project grows larger, the barrier for entry for new developers get higher: it takes longer and longer to understand the system/platform in depth, and many never even try to get there.

Processes and security concerns affect this too: you're often only allowed to fix something which has a ticket assigned to it, originating from a business user. Touching anything else is a big no-no, as it would mean QA has to re-test all the things that could be impacted. Of course we can argue whether that's actually the case and how proper testing would mitigate this, but you see my point...

I had to deal with many sizable codebases of legacy code over the years and even answered a similar question once on StackExchange. Apparently people liked the answer: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-in...

The question was within a somewhat specific context (team of scientists, visual programming environment, etc...) but I use the same approach for all projects. Never reached 3M LoC for a single projet or system component though. More like 1.5M. Anyways, that process works for me. Maybe it does for others.

Well, actually I think you quoted it yourself:

> [...] which was considered normal wear after 100,000 miles.

It's not really clear, but I think the "considered normal" applies to the point of view of the interviewed taxi driver.

This is nice, but just by reading the title I thought "wasn't there a few sites doing this already?"

The top one coming to my mind at the time being (which I'm surprised to not see in this thread already, considering the usual popularity of remote/rework/basecamp stuff on HN): https://weworkremotely.com/

Still, nice personal achievement in terms of developing and delivering a product.

Giggles is not exactly the right word. I didn't make it just to see if I could pass or take a piss at someone.

I don't think anything is a better practice than an actual interview. Doing a rehearsal or workshops won't compare.

But thanks for the insult, random stranger.

Besides, if that was your only take away from my comment, I think you may have missed the main point. Maybe you were too infuriated by that point already.

And I think that when it comes to cumulative time-wasting, the culprit is usually more the interviewer (or the incompetent recruiting agency).

Also, would be interested in having data on the "most normal people don't do this" bit. I know plenty who do or did at some point, across several countries.

> They then decided they weren't sure if I wanted to work there (apparently because, you know, I'm in the habit of wasting a day of my life interviewing for giggles)

That's not really fair though. Tons of people apply for jobs because they need a job. I've surely done it in the past. I've applied and accepted jobs I didn't give a damn crap about. I had to pay rent, feed 2 kids, and pay my wife's tuition. And even did so with multiple jobs at the same time. Anything else was secondary. I went into interviews, praised the greatness of the ideas of some shitty startups which were doomed to fail. I always showed up prepared and was "professional" (in so far as you can show up and not give a rat's ass, but not let it show), and always tried to show I was invested by having already ideas about their products, website, etc... But still, didn't actually care for that stuff.

So, I was motivated and a good "employee", but was I a good fit? Probably not.

And, on the other hand, I also actually did interview at times just for giggles. Or for practice. Or just in case. Or to get leverage.

And when I was the recruiting, while I surely wouldn't assume that the person in front of me would be "interviewing for giggles" (at first), I can totally understand the "weren't sure if I wanted to work there". Like I answered on another part of this thread: the onus / burden of proof is on you, you are the one who has to show you really want to be there (even though you actually may not).

It's screwed up, but it's how it is, because we also work for money. I know I did often. Still did my best in any job I got though.

(And you should not expect that either, actually. I'm similarly pissed by friends or colleagues who tell me "damn it's like these guys don't care about the job or don't give it all". Well, heck yeah, why would they?)