kradroy

I'm not at Google, but I'd like to see their support system for post-recruitment and post-hiring.

I currently have one neurodiverse (more than one condition) employee who has remained at the same career level for nearly a decade because they don't meet the criteria for the next level. They have expressed interest in advancing though. I don't know how to handle it. I can't promote them, as the next level role has much more responsibility and accountability, and they just aren't there yet. I just give them nice bonuses and salary bumps, but eventually it'll hit a limit for their job level and a higher-up will need to be involved.

I've reached out to internal resources I was pointed to, but it's all very informal and difficult to find someone qualified to answer fairly specific questions. I've pointed the employee to resources as well, but one of their conditions kind of hampers their ability following through on vague directions.

I feel frustrated because they're a good employee, but I've yet to find useful guidance on helping them get to where they want to be.

Maybe it's not necessary to define truth for this. Considering metrics that you want to influence might be a better way - hate crime arrests in locales, negative/divisive message content, donations/volunteering for positive causes, etc. But I'm a pessimist and I think moving these metrics in the right direction would adversely affect the $$$ metric that shareholders care about, so it's not going to happen.

I don't feel that way, but as someone who has personally been through most of these scenarios your statements come off as blithe and without nuance. Becoming successful really isn't as easy and hand-wavey as you make it out to be.

This is a naive set of statements, even the ones without tone-deaf conditionals like "if you are able to rise" and "if you can get something better".

Here's a run-on reality of your statements.

"Startups were you get equity." ... that gets watered down and most of which goes to investors and founders, who will force a sale after 5-7 years when they get into a pinch and all you get is a $75k retention bonus that doesn't offset the opportunity cost of not having gone to work for an established company, if you're not let go after being acquired.

"Large companies where you can progress to high salaries if you are able to rise." ... based upon your ability to play politics and join the right factions, if you're the right skin color and social class and age group, and ignore that fact that by sticking around "to rise" you're limiting your salary increases that would come from jumping ship every 2-3 years, if you're in an area where there's a dense concentration of businesses that require your skillset.

"Starting your own business and being competent at it." ... which requires capital that a bank usually grants you in the form of a loan because your parents aren't rich, but if you're the wrong skin color or social class, you don't get that loan and your business ends up being mostly an expensive hobby because you're still working a 9-to-5 (or 2 part-time jobs) so that you don't starve and become homeless.

"Working on commissions in an area where the commissions can be large -- true sales, or real estate." ... where you discover that you simply can't pick up any high priced asset and sell it, because someone is doling out the leads while also taking a sizable cut of your commission despite you "working hard" to obtain it, especially if you're not the same skin color as and part of the in-group of the persons giving you the sales leads.

"Being a professional, e.g. doctor, accountant, lawyer, has traditionally had high wages and you often run your own business." ... that require years of specialized schooling during which you aren't earning much money and are likely going into massive 6-figure debt, because your parents aren't rich and are also in debt and then you hope and pray that you can overcome the various artificial hurdles that professional associations put in place to enforce scarcity and exclusivity and then after all the "hard work" you get to either join a company of professionals and play out one of the previously stated scenarios or try to start your own business, which require various forms of legally required insurance (malpractice, etc), acceptance into various trade networks, leasing an office.

It's not as simple as it seems.

To be tongue-in-cheek - that person will make a great dev, because I copy answers from stackoverflow all the time and get paid 6 figures to do it.

In many of those cases they don't officially record it and it's called "wage theft."

What's puzzling to me is that I'm from South Florida while my parents are from the South, of which S Florida is not a part. They have the pin-pen merger. However, they are distinct for me. I've always wondered how much of a role parents' speech patterns vs. peers' and teachers' play in phonological development.

I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted, because even Wikipedia acknowledges the issues with its contributor community.

Years ago I had a friend who worked for Wikimedia Foundation and was very enthusiastic about it. That optimism didn't last for long. He left after a few years citing WF's messaging style of "holding the content hostage" during fundraising drives and the established, exclusive contributor community that, more often than not, would drive away new contributors with snippy responses and arcane editing rules.

> Some more context, they're not native English speakers, live in a small dirt-village but somehow many people there have a mobile phone and FB so they found me/added me.

This probably isn't a happy coincidence. Facebook is "the internet" for large swaths of the world outside of North American and Europe. Very similar to how AOL has been "the internet" for my 70-year-old mom for the past 20 years, only recently being supplanted by Facebook.

You're not the intended user of Salesforce. The UIs and flows you use are mostly data entry funnels for the true user: management and executives. You didn't pay for the software; they did. "End-user" satisfaction is low on the product feature list.

Every time your client slows down, somewhere an executive was promoted.

It's "enterprise", so you have to talk to a human and haggle. More info is located on the FAQ link in the article.

As someone who lived on contract work for 5 years the "quadrupling of income" isn't a reasonable metric. Invariably your wage gets diluted. At salaried positions you don't have to deal with:

- Clients who pay late

- Clients who don't want to pay

- Clients who disappear with a large, unpaid bill

- Finding clients (ideally ones who don't need cajoling to pay on time)

- Self-employment taxes and managing expenses for deductions

- Providing your own health coverage and managing the benefits one would get at a full-time position

- Being your own safety net during periods of no work

- Legal exposure

"[Old] Usage patterns don't make sense to allocate bandwidth equally for up/down."

In the past 5 years the amount of video and streaming (pre-recorded and live) has exploded. And remote/WFH culture is advancing. It's time for US internet providers to catch up.

As a manager this is how I've laid out our code review process, almost exactly. It has worked well since we adopted it. The only two devs who have left the team in the past 6 years were the types you mentioned: the rule follower and the rule maker.

The rule follower could neither handle the ambiguity of the communication media (written text) nor could he understand that the intention of some communications were not to dispute or criticize (cultural and personal communication idiosyncrasies) his work.

The rule maker was just a control freak. I'm glad he's gone.

>Unless there's a change in strategy - unlikely - you can expect the wealth concentration to continue in the UK, with increasing danger to the personal circumstances of any kids you have - if not to yourself if there's a serious downturn.

It's the same in the US.

>Even a 95%er is in danger of losing their property if they lose their job for an extended period if they don't live off speculative investments and rent.

I fear this the most. My husband and I make more money than the rest of our family combined (both mothers, both fathers, 4 adult siblings, their spouses), but I still feel uneasy about the future. Maybe everyone worries more during uncertain times, but being mid-career with savings/investments I never thought I'd be concerned about losing everything.

If you're 55 and meet some other requirements your property tax assessment can be transferred to a new property once in your life. Prop 13 has been expanded for assessment transfers among family members. You can imagine what kind of extremes this will equate to in a few generations.

Very true, which is why I, as a manager, ask senior devs during interviews why they made those choices and how they integrated and deployed the changes. In a lot of cases it turns out their flashy new tech choices were for one-off greenfield projects that were support systems and not primary production systems. I'm usually more interested in how they improved prod systems using the existing stack. This helps me figure out if they're into maintenance work or if they're only interested in tinkering with shiny new things. Both activities have their places on dev teams, but I take it consideration for the actual role I'm filling.

This is exactly it. The nuances of regex patterns can be misconstrued. Obviously if the regex used for flow control cannot be sensibly translated to more traditional conditional statements, then they are permitted. Even in that case, the "simplest" regex was preferred.

I worked at the second largest adult content network about 10 years ago. They used the same stack mentioned in the article. The design philosophy was about simplicity and continuity above all. They didn't want to use newer technology because it's hard to find people to support it. They didn't even like you to use regular expressions when case statements could be used. Regex is too conceptually complicated.

If you can host and serve porn on a LAMP stack from a traditional bare metal server data center, the guy on the other end doesn't care as long as it's reliable.

I work at a large tech company now and it amazes me how terribly executed and unnecessarily complex most development efforts are. There was a very strong results-oriented culture at the adult media company.

That would be considered "mala fides" and the court would likely hold the officers/directors liable for the loan amount. Also, prior to filing for bankruptcy any attorney worth his spit will advise his client to fully repay or continue paying obligations to the US government. US government-backed loans are very difficult to completely discharge in a bankruptcy.

Miami (FL) doesn't close. When I lived there not long ago, there was a period where I was between jobs where I came home after sunrise every day of the week. If you're trying to stay out past 2am in Miami and not able to, you're not trying... at all. Bars/clubs usually close at 5am, but I believe are only required to close for 1 hour a day, so there are afterhours spots.

Source: Native Miamian.

I tried them out for 4 months. I kept one garment per delivery on average. I buy my clothes from thrift shops all the way to Barney's/Neiman Marcus. You can find quality at any price point. However, when their internal brands began showing up more and more in my boxes I started suspecting they were offloading "junk" on me at a premium. I thought about whether the stylists make a commission or have flexibility in pricing the garments. There were many items that I thought were overpriced for theor quality. They sent me a "flannel" shirt that had the feel of paperboard.

I thought about applying for their ML positions, because it's definitely an interesting business problem. But I got a strong feeling they don't actually use ML in their product. They're just a retailer after all.

By borrowing against your securities you have more cash to invest. You've put a multiplier on the amount you can invest. That's leverage. However, you have to pay back the loan with fees and interest. This increases risk because you could end up owing money rather than just having none if the securities crash.

As someone who has used the public internet since the late 80s I have turned away from it almost entirely in the past few years. Its content is similar to those free rags like SFWeekly you can pick up from a dispenser on the streets. It's largely poor quality content supported by largely poor quality, irrelevant advertising. If you want to get riled up and find a rub-n-tug to calm you down, you don't even have to leave your home anymore.

The internet is in need of a reboot.

In most jurisdictions the only thing a company in the US is legally required to do is pay you for the days you've worked in the pay period you are terminated. If they let you go, they are also usually required to give you your final paycheck at termination time. Mandatory severance is not part of the law.

I have some experience with these questions.

1. Management, and involvement of management in particular. When you're an individual contributor, it can often be motivating and validating to hear praise and interest from a manager, director, VP or beyond.

2. It's not hopeless. In that case there are two courses of action required a) engage the team and build an atmosphere of psychological safety; this is done by giving focused, time-relevant feedback, both positive and critical, on behavior in group settings (e.g. "That question you asked in stand-up was critical. I'm glad you brought it up.") b) push out (fire, transfer, etc) negative influencers and those who don't contribute, once enough time has passed since instituting team culture changes.

2.b might sound harsh, but in normal circumstances a group of people will reject and disassociate with a member who no longer shares their values. In a work setting a manager has to do this or they risk the productive and positive team members leaving.

My summary of civic philosophy in the Bay Area: "Think liberally. Act conservatively."

In addition to San Francisco I've lived in the US South, the Northeast an in Europe. And out of all those regions I feel the Bay Area has been the most conservative and discordant. It's really a shame how a combination of the Byzantine legal processes and small cadres who know and shape the system have created a tyranny of the minority in the Bay Area and San Francisco in particular.

I work for SAP and it's surprising to me that not even other engineers in the Bay Area have heard of the company despite its campus in Palo Alto and their sponsorship of the "SAP Center" in San Jose. Do you file expenses? You probably use SAP Concur. Do you order office materials or equipment? You may use SAP Ariba. Have you taken part in interviewing a candidate coworker, or have you done yearly career goal planning? You may have used SuccessFactors for that. And this doesn't even count SAP proper's offerings (HANA/S4, etc).

Severance can definitely delay receiving unemployment. Receiving the $1200 stimulus does not, but receiving the PPP funds through your employer would. The latter consequence is causing some employers to not use that loan/grant.

It is a game. The consequences are varied, but for McConnell they are generational wealth, the self-satisfaction of entrenching Republican values in the Federal court system for at least another generation and the destruction of senatorial traditions that were centuries old.