jmccree

For people early in their career, a job interview can be one of the most stressful experiences in their entire life. I still remember every interview I've had. Writing code on a whiteboard with "everyone's eyes on you" can be extremely stressful for some people. I know brilliant coders who get absolutely paralyzed at the thought of having to present to an audience. (which is what whiteboarding during a job interview is, the social dynamics are entirely different when you're working with a co-worker on a problem)

If 99% of a coders job will be sitting at their desk cranking out code, why put some much emphasis in the hiring process on how they perform in extremely high stress social situations? The skills that make someone a great interviewee do not necessarily line up to being a great coder. If someone wants to up open their favorite IDE or VIM and show you how they code, why not let them? Personally, having dysgraphia, I would offer to open a text editor to write psuedocode rather than use a writing utensil.

Of course, every hiring situation is unique. If your developers are regularly required to present to clients, investors, or inside management stakeholders, then whiteboarding could be a valid hiring test.

I feel like widely distributed teams have a whole different set of problems than remote in the same time zone.

In my personal opinion, if you need to set aside 15 minutes per day, killing at least 45 mins of productivity, for people to communicate, then your communication processes are broken. All of the things you mention could be communicated throughout the day in a team chat room. If someone needs help, they should send up a flare immediately via email or chat and get assistance as soon as someone is free.

In my personal experience, standups are practically useless if you have a team that has good communication practices. You know what people are working on from the ticket system, things are shared throughout the day as people work on chat, and if you do need some level of daily status report, having everyone email one in directly to the manager is the most efficient route.

Glad I wasn't the only one to think this was going to be about an NSA program and outrage they would name something SWEATSHOP.

Interesting timing. Just as I started reading this article while watching the superbowl pre-game, a segment offering a guac recipe aired sponsored by avocados. I'm reminded how the Patagonian toothfish was renamed as "Chilean Seabass" and of course "the other white meat".

Edit: before I could finish typing this comment, another commercial aired for avocados.

Netflix runs most of their operations on AWS and Amazon prime is one of their largest competitors.

The TSA "officers" do not have arrest power and are forbidden by policy from using force (to perhaps perform a citizens arrest if allowed in state for a state law violation), so they really don't have the ability to take anyone into "custody", hence calling for local police.

This subject is interesting to me. I've worked remote my entire career, and mostly positive experiences. One negative experience was at a place struggling to fill positions and opened up to remote team members, but they did not change the company culture to support the remote members, and as a result all of the remote members were gone within a year or two and the experiment deemed "a failure".

So I understand why some companies are reluctant to bring on remote members. It requires your entire company culture to change if you want a remote team member and not just someone used as basically contract labor. For a team used to making decisions and having conversations in person, it's a big change to have to move everything online to include the remote person/s. It can breed resentment on both sides. In my negative experience I would find out decisions had been made days ago while the on-site team was out to lunch together, and no one had informed those of us working remotely.

Change is not easy. Companies that started with a remote workflow or commit fully to embracing a remote workflow can make teams located anywhere work. Adding on remote team members without a culture change to support it is a recipe for disaster.

Have you tried doing a daily standup where everyone calls in individually from their office? In my experience things work the best when everyone is operating remotely with the same "communication handicap".

I'm unaware of any dedicated provider that will let me take a $20/mo small instance and scale it within minutes to an insanely beef 8 core instance for a day for about $20 and then back down, with less than 15 mins total downtime. Total cost for a month less than $50.

One of the things I feel AWS has succeeded at is putting control of infrastructure in the technology team's hands. In many places dedi or colo requires contract negotiation with the provider and involves some sort of purchasing dept. There are some places I've worked with where getting a dedi/colo could be weeks or months of different teams paperwork. With AWS the tech team can spin up 100 servers with no outside involvement needed after the initial work of getting an aws account with $x-xxx k/mo limit.

It's hard to beat the operational flexibility AWS provides, but I can see a few scenarios where creating your own mini private cloud out of dedi/colo servers could be more cost effective.

It's the difference between a census "combined statistical area" and "metropolitan statistical area". The CSA combines all the metro/micro statistical areas in a general area. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose-San_Francisco-Oakland,... .

Using nginx/varnish as a caching reverse proxy in front of apache/php is rather common. You get all the ease of use of Apache (mod_rewrite instant .htaccess rule changes, mod_php, etc.) , ability to use whatever cpu intensive plugins/code you want in your application, and once the page is cached it loads instantly for as long as you cache it. Nginx can be configured to serve static assets directly or your app can use CDN links.

I've never really understood the recent fascination with static site generators. I get that it's neat you can upload just everything to S3 and host it there with no servers, but then if you want to change something site wide you have to reload everything. Dynamic app + with caching reverse proxy + optional CDN is a tried and true method. I've been on projects that use this method with small VMs to power sites with tons of traffic.

Every tipping thread on HN becomes an example of why the rest of the world hates the SV/startup community. You have people who likely make more in one day than the wait person will make all week arguing over whether 15% or 20% to tip. An extra $5-10 is likely pocket change for someone on HN, but could make someone in the service industry's day.

20% is the default tip for good service. 30% and above is a high tip. If you have bad service, ask to speak to a manager. I'm embarrassed by the lack of empathy shown in this thread.

Have you ever worked at popular sit down restaurant during a dinner rush? It's a mad house... Not easy at all.

Good service is knowing the menu and wine/drink list. Being able to provide recommendations and advice on what to order. Trying to write down all the orders at this table while you see an empty water glass and someone is taking 5 minutes to decide which salad to order and you know there's food for another table getting cold in the window.

If you just want food and a place to sit, there's plenty of fast food/fast casual restaurants. If you go to a place with wait staff, it's because you are going to get waited on. A good wait person can be the difference in having a wonderful night or a horrible one.

You're not being scammed in the US. You're given the ability to give immediate feedback on the service you received by adjusting your tip amount.

What I don't understand is people saying they are "forced" to pay extra... Why would raising all the prices of the food 15-20% to make up for lost tips and actually forcing you pay that be better? Then you don't have the option to pay less if the service was bad.

I would say 18% is the standard tip as that is what most restaurants (in GA at least) will charge as "automatic gratuity" for parties of 6 or more. The math on 20% is easier so a lot of people default to 20%

Tipping is the original crowd funding.

It's really not that most restaurants wouldn't make up the wages to the minimum. The minimum wage in most US states is not for most people would call a "living wage, it's around $15k/yr. It's not uncommon in a major city for waiters to be able to pull in $30-60k/year. The thing is that in many place tips are paid out in cash at the end of their shift, so if you don't tip you're literally taking money out of their pocket for that day.

Many paycheck I've seen from most wait staff is less than $20 for two weeks. The employer is required to withhold taxes based on the hours worked and tips reported, so the whole paycheck basically goes to taxes.

As for cases where someone doesn't make enough tips to hit minimum wage, in many places not making enough tips is a sign that the person isn't doing a good enough job. So they won't be fired for "asking for minimum wage", but because "their performance was unsatisfactory".

So yes, in practice most wait staff do live off their tips. Depending on the locale an extra $10 or $100 in tips could be the difference in what their kid eats that night or whether they can make their car payment tomorrow.

(Personal story time: I will always remember helping my mom wait tables at a local diner when I was young and someone tipped $10 on a ~$10 meal and instead of eating hamburger helper that night we got to go out an eat at Long John Silver's.)

So to preserve democracy, we must sacrifice freedom of speech?

I've worked remotely my entire career and one shared aspect of the most successful teams was a chat room named "watercooler" or similar where people were free to chit chat. Everyone knows to ignore the room if busy, so there's not that worry of IMing someone and distracting them. Some times people may reply back hours after you say something, but when a few people have spare cycles at the same time nice conversations can break out.

It's curious to me how when a lot of discussions on remote workers, especially those negative to the idea, I rarely see mention of chat rooms, when I've used them at every single place I've worked remotely. Most of my career success is due to connections I've made on IRC. I don't think this is that rare of a scenario, see the #w00w00 folks.

In the era of "catfishing" where people can fall in love with people based solely on chat and online relationships, I think it's hard to deny it's possible to form meaningful connections online. Emails, conference calls, and video conferences aren't going to do it. If you spend 8+ hours a day "talking" to some one in a chat room, you can learn more than 15 minutes at a water cooler now and then. As well, the whole team/group can read the backlog and know what's going on with everyone else. No need to repeat the same story to x, y, and z.

I agree with what you've said about having some informal conversation during lulls on calls. Those moments can be very valuable. Another thing I've done on some teams is after a major release or milestone achieved, everyone grabs a drink of their choice and joins a group video chat and virtually goes out to the bar to celebrate as a group.

Lastly, one of the things I've done is occasionally send small gifts to other team members. As an example after explaining rubber duck debugging to a team member who solved their own problem immediately after asking me and wasn't familiar with the term, I sent them an awesome rubber duck overnight. (Total cost <$10 via prime)

This is one reason I love Penn & Teller. They never insult their audience by claiming to actually have magic powers. It's hard to beat their cups and balls trick using clear plastic cups while explaining exactly how the trick is being done, yet it's still almost impossible to follow the sleight of hand for most people. It's so impressive.

None of these are particularly new questions. There are federal buildings and federal leased space in every major city across the US. The feds have their own Federal Protective Service Police that respond to incidents on federal property in major cities nation wide. Fire/EMS is usually handled by the locals.

The core national mall area is already protected by US Park Police, it would be possible to create a core DC area as a national park and return the rest of all land to the states. Federal buildings on land returned to the states would be treated like any other federal building in a state. There are plenty of federal buildings in NoVa and Maryland already.

Do you have a problem with people being tortured, American citizens or no, when that's the best viable way to prevent greater violence?

I believe the suggestion was more along the lines that plenty of people who voted for the "evil torture party AKA:GOP" were not actually knowingly voting to support torture, but instead voting for the candidate that espoused economic policies beneficial, or at least, the least detrimental to their own personal interests.

It's hypocritical to blame one side for torture, when the other side instead just started doing assassinations via drone. If you truly believe anyone who voted Republican supported torture, you must admit anyone who voted Democrat supports assassinations.

Full Disclosure: I've voted Libertarian in every presidential election since I've been eligible to vote. I see hypocrisy and political spin on ALL sides of the discussion.

I would hesitate to say "no threat". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_attacks_on_humans#Others list several attacks, including a few where responding officers shot the coyote. To be fair, a much bigger concern is preying on pets and live stock.

We have coyotes in the city limits of Atlanta, GA and black bears are regularly spotted in the nearby suburbs. (In counties with population over 500k) I would hesitate to say there's only a handful of areas with bears/coyotes/etc., as over 90% of the US land area is considered rural. To be sure, most wild animals are more afraid of us and run away rather than attack, but it's a legitimate thing that law enforcement has to be prepared for.

There's two things that seems to be missing here with regards to routine patrol officers being armed in the US. First, Great Britain is smaller than many US states. The population density of ~780/sqmi is higher than all but 3 of US states. The majority of US states are under ~200 persons/sqmi. Outside of major cities and suburbs the nearest backup officer can routinely be 15 or more minutes away. As well, many areas have dangerous wild animals to deal with. Bears, coyotes, wolfs, etc. that Britain has mostly eliminated.

Secondly, in the US, we have the right to keep and bear arms, which means every one the routine patrol officer encounters should be assumed to be legally armed as well. It would put officers at a severe disadvantage to be unarmed when regularly dealing with armed suspects. In many states 5-10% of the population has a concealed carry permit, and in the majority (40+) of states open carry of a rifle is legal without any permit. Whether you agree with this or not, it's a fact of life in most of the US that a large percent of the population is legally armed, so there seems no reason to arbitrarily limit police from also being armed as any individual citizen could be.

State borders are not any more arbitrary than the border between Canada and the US. In the US, "States" are sovereign states that gave up some limited amount of sovereignty to join the Union. They are not simply administrative divisions like in other countries. The Constitution established a limited role for the federal government of the United States and reserved all other powers to the individual states.

It may seem like a historical relic now, but each state joined the union under the premise (and likely binding law/treaty) of retaining some sovereignty. Each state has it's own laws, courts, police, military, etc. It's a feature, not a bug, that rural states can prevent the cities from imposing a tyranny of the majority on them at a federal level via the senate. Just as the house of representatives based on population can prevent a bunch of rural states from imposing their will on the high population ones.

Take for instance Nevada. If the majority of the population of Nevada wants legal gambling, they should be able to have it. A pure federal democracy would allow 9 states to make a law banning gambling nation wide. That's far less likely to happen in the current system as low population states have reason to band together and prevent any federal over riding of the freedom of their state's citizens to self govern.

Checks and balances. Wyoming has 1 representative in the house, California has 53. When you combine the house and the senate, it should (in theory) be much harder for a bill to pass without approval of both the majority of the states and the majority of the population.

The senate represents the states and the house represents the people. It would be entirely unfair if a small number of high population states could easily impose their will on a large number of small population states. States and their citizens gave up some of their sovereignty when they joined the union, and in return were promised some equitable form of representation, no matter the size of their population. Large states like Colorado bring massive amounts of land an natural resources to the union.

There's a reason we're a constitutional republic and not a pure democracy. Pure democracy would inevitably lead to a tyranny of the majority. Nine US states have over half the US population. Would it be fair for those few states to able to completely over-ride the interests of the other 41 states in the union?