71 karma · joined March 17, 2011
(disclosure: not legal advice, these things are complex, etc; contributed work on an appellate brief on a related matter)
The idea of truth-seeking is laughable. You are required to switch sides each time.
Or as to the feeling that nothing feels fully resolved. It seems like that should be expected when the opponents are well-matched; rather than, say, a runaway victory resolved in favor of one side? Even then, I don't think any sports spectator would want a team to actually give up partway through and concede rather than continue.
The most competitive ones, to start with, wouldn't blindly follow an LD style regardless in front of a judge pool and format which naturally abhors it and favors collaborativeness, wit, etc.
And yup, it is a bit more like this imaginary scenario: past high school, there is no more gridiron football (irrelevant sidenote: this does seem likely to happen given the CTE rates amongst players who don't proceed past high school) and so the next generation's Odell Beckhams will move to England after high school to become Premiership players. Which actually is a fascinating thought experiment too...
Why?
Because they already know how to be orators and can excel at that (I've seen both sides of this: there are pretty prominent examples of former debate champions now working in front-facing roles as PMs, VPs, etc in tech). Having mastered that, it's pretty unsatisfying to compete strictly at that level. Look no further than the intellectual depth of a debate with Tony Blair - an orator who can't follow his argument all the way down - for an example.
Here let me explain the logic of your criticism this way:
> These formatted baking pastry competitions because are useless! Really, who's to say whether any of these guys/gals knows how to poach an egg?
> the American rugby national team is really bad, probably because American football players (e.g. gridiron football) aren't good either.
From my understanding, including one person I know who represented the US two years ago and now does parli for Yale, high school worlds is not a venue for people (edit: people= American high school students) who do it because they are otherwise competitive.
That said: in college worlds and parli ... worlds, former LDers have done really well (e.g. when that is the competitive venue they go after).
Even then the funny thing about this article is that, in indicting what it considers a decay in critical thinking, the article misses a lot. Spot the error:
> in recent years its speed has increased markedly, as have the mountains of evidence. The emphasis on logic and critical thinking has waned.
Disclosure: did this activity, was ranked #1 for my class year, etc etc. (Note that doesn't mean I think the activity's perfect, either.) One of the coolest outcomes is that - since it attracts people who want to become lawyers - you end up building a really, really deep legal bench:, fed and appellate clerks, m&a/whiteshoe types, litigators, etc.
the best at any highly competitive activity - when assembled together - will talk primarily about that thing.
Your explanation about the value of exceptions to rules in research is correct and would occur to, say, pretty much anyone who has drafted a motion (worth clarifying: not a drag on you). Far from a disagreement, the truth of this premise is why - as I pointed out - the most experienced/valued appellate drafters effectively rely on boolean. (Except, I guess, the 'within' operator might count as a semantic operator. Although that's been in lexis and west for as long as I've seen them, and I suspect have found immense use for much longer than that...)
edit: Adding that of course only one of the two following premises need be incorrect (firms should use products which enable them to spend less time on research; the citation graph enables lawyers to spend less time on research while yielding identical quality; firms should use citation graph -based products). Depending on your circumstances, only one may in fact be wrong.
You might be assuming something about what counts as valuable business from the perspective of the firm or practitioner (or partner) -- consider that 'we have an army of associates poring over every detail with a fine-toothed comb' was instituted by those very same people in pursuit of value, defined however -- but my assumptions from 3 years ago may have since been obsoleted as well.
Btw, a clarification about the nature of the research that's being purported to be being cut down on: it's not the type which is like "hey paralegal, go on lexis and get me all the cases in this motion" Which, yes, makes sense: it frees up more and higher-value hours for more time spent on the memo, etc. It's rather purported to automate the time otherwise spent finding, say, available expertise, seemingly contrary decisions, analogous circumstances, distinguishing principles articulated (or ideally by asking the first of ^, you can locate the second, match the third, and cite the fourth) etc.
And all of which, yea the more it were to occur, would deliver more value for all involved.
> "spend less time [billing] on research"
is not, and never will be, an effective value proposition; and which would be obvious to anyone in anything but the most niche putt-putt fields of practice.
Rayiner is of course authority enough on this subject qua the intended market. But I'm here to confirm further that legal technology startups which ignore these central things -- PDFs are essential, confidentiality is maintained on in-house systems with their own vendors, and depth and specificity is critically more important than survey-like breadth -- will probably fail to address any real needs.
Source: I worked at a highly atypical IP litigation boutique (where drafts were written in LaTex and we scripted common ediscovery stuff), and later in relevance ranking at a legal tech startup.
1.) My point was to answer (here, I'm quoting)
> And it doesn't seem clear that finance firms pay that well: > The average base salary for a software engineer at a finance firm is $92,000
by saying (and here I'm quoting the first sentence of my post)
> The best in finance have most of their compensation on a perfomance-bonus basis.
which is a relatively straightforward clarification, and on which point I went on to cite 100k base + 200k bonus.
As to the second point?
2.) I've yet to meet anyone "software engineers at software firms" who "make tens of millions". Or maybe that's just biased to my age group? But the best from my circles turned a 200+ offer to found a startup, and then a year after that didn't work out, has since taken a 300+ offer. I can assure the level of talent required for something like this is, indeed, atypical.
But I also can't say that you're wrong, since I can't say I'm familiar with every outlier case. Just that your experience has been different?
Well, at risk of sounding nasty, I actually don't think what you're talking about -- again, people working as software engineers at software firms making annual incomes measured in multiple 8-figures -- exists anywhere, even as an outlier.
so for a highly sought after trading associate (real example, really high valued financial institution), get 100k base but also getting forward guidance for a 200k bonus at an absolute minimum - e.g. if not turning out to be completely incompetent.
I think it's worth noting that Palo Alto is not very much of a college town at all.
The point in Jeremy's post may not seem absolutely consequential in the case of 16 line marginalia; but a common frame of reference that ALSO satisfies 'business requirements' seems pretty desirable to me. That probably has something to do with pretty much all(?) client javascript being either (1) creating/reading some kind of local state Object, (2)updating by way of events you attach to the dom, and (3) the ajax endpoints which send 1 and 2 to the server.
So - admittedly green, college senior - I'm not really sure how to elegantly get 1000 modules loosely coupled, or what looks like, but I'm genuinely curious how many (most?) of those wouldn't fall under the three types of abstractions that Backbone gives you. I am intrigued, and I have a feeling that someone's about to point me to some unifying abstraction which espouses this method and ISN'T just the dom?
1. Credibility You're take as fact that the accusations are already false, and hence "grossly unprofessional". Which holds pretty much no water, since that this person is making a claim not just about her own knowledge (re: the aggression/harassment in question) but ALSO about what actually was also common knowledge at the time. Let's not leave out, either, that books of length probably don't lend themselves well to 100% fabricated accusations - least of all those which implicate small groups of people and mention them by name. So much for anonymity and character assassination, huh?
On the other hand, the recounted instance the author gives us is being falsely accused of being difficult to work with after a manager refuses to move past aggression.
2. Stated Accusation vs. Perception
"she seemed proud of the fact that the engineers were demoted or reassigned without even having a chance to defend themselves"
You're living in the world of 'seems', rather than the world of facts. Of course, facts can be fabricated, and we can prove that they are in fact false. No one is denying that.
That said, things stated _as facts_ (behavior specified, conversations recalled, timelines constructed, etc -- basically the stuff that makes up this piece and others like it) are going to be better than your world of made up accusations (the stuff that separates conspiracies like the one you're touting here from an actual story). Think _Loose Change_ vs. _All The President's Men_.
But as to the merits of what you've said, I don't know why she 'seemed proud' to you. Joining you - again, temporarily - in your world of impression, you'll find that she had _seemed_ pretty dejected and not the least bit upset that she had to go through her superiors to get anything done about it. The word might be something more like 'relieved'.
3. ASSUMPTIONS
You straight-up assert that these people didn't have the chance to defend themselves, and that's how they were fired. The truth, by your way of thinking, was something that was not let out because they did not have the chance to say it.
And, yet, you insist that others are ranting and, as you put it, 'pointing and screaming'. So let's work out the assumptions you're making, and who's doing any 'pointing'.
I'm not sure that those accused had the chance to defend themselves, that's something you have to admit from the account. But it's definitely not something you can - as you have here - straight-up assume. If that were the case, and these people were 100% innocent as you seem to believe, you can be sure they would have a book deal of their own; although I'm less sure if you wouldn't find some kind of duplicity or targeting then, either.
As well, the facts as given point against you: it's not a conspiracy against engineers. The person who was doing straight-up sexual harassment by her account was a senior supervisor/management or somesuch. It's not, as you put it, the two engineers that this evil woman and her billionaire female ally targeted.
Finally, let's not forget that the account also specifies that Cheryl Sandberg made a point of talking to all the females in the office to make sure things were right. Or could be made right, as was the case here. If you think that any of this points to a world in which the, say, 5% of women in the office lord over the politics and seek to find you and accuse you falsely so that you can be fired, well, no amount of bullshit-detection applied to your posts can save you.
"I'm having trouble reading this one . . . can someone else help me?" is NOT-equivalent to "I am so closed to this issue that I'd rather demean the point, let's make the industry look bad AND lame. here ya go. <idiotic joke>."
...or at least there is a conceivable difference between the second and the first BESIDES just the idiotic joke. That said, I don't mean to imply that you can't actually mean the latter and dress it up as the former.
It's less that the 'employees weren't nice people' and more that this employee was powerless to reign in patterns of offensive/illegal/errant behavior.
Still it wouldn't be so necessary to focus on, _except_ for all the crap being thrown in here to accept/defend it.
And, to be clear, there is something unambiguously wrong for a male supervisor to roam the workplace trying to push lesser-ranked employees into sexual acts;
worse, for the behavior to go on long enough until SOMEONE (again, by your analysis, a 'woman on tech') thought it was worth fixing. Even if she had to use all that dreaded 'political operations-ing' to make it right.
- for a female employee to be aggressively pursued by a supervisor for a sexual act, nor can you fathom
- the powerlessness of being one of those women who have all noticed this behavior and, worse,
- knowing that they can't do anything about it.
Nor, as your comment indicatese ... should anyone think it's important.
Some people might consider this worth discussion, even if they think that the issue's overblown (either this instance or generally 'women in tech'), but not you.
No, instead, you thought it would be fucking clever to do perhaps the stupidest, tritest 2003-era joke to convey your callous - in response to a pretty even-handed account, no less. It's beyond saving to be upset about the stupid shit which runs through this site, but what I am having trouble with is trying to decipher what the fucking point of your comment here is. Does mine have one either? Not really; guilty as charged. In any case - your stupid response deserves at least mine in kind, and probably also the revulsion of anyone who thinks things this-article-related should matter.
And, fuck, a tiny violin joke? Really? That's the icing on the human-shitstain cake.
Edited for emphasis, I am sorry that my infuriation has distracted you by way of cursing. But not apologizing for total derision - I'll stand by conveying how _completely fucked up_ this is. Let's take this seriously.
-Richard Posner on Malcolm Gladwell