sbilstein

I think you might be reading into what I wrote a bit. This is just how I feel...not how I WANT to feel. Obviously, these are biases and anxieties that exist in my own mixed-race low-income immigrant brain that i wish weren't there. As another latino founder told me..."walk into a VC pitch meeting with the confidence of a tall white man."

Like I don't hate caucasians but sometimes can't help but notice these differences. I also can't just focus on fucking Netflix during an interview! These anxieties and nervousness creep into our heads whether we like it or not!

I've faced all these things too; I pass for white and have similarly been told I'm not hispanic enough. It's not a simple yes or no kind of situation. It simply can suck in some ways to be all mixed up.

The company that wrote this blogpost, which I work for part-time, does exactly that. I think it's a massive improvement.

I think it's pretty bold to post something like this. As a person of color, I absolutely observe bias in hiring processes and recruiting...however as someone who majored in CS it's undeniable that we have far less women and minorities going through these programs.

After I graduated, my university managed to get the number closer to 60/40 of men vs. women but when I graduated there was just one woman in our graduating class. I heard anecdotally from those majoring in EE how they had professors actually discourage them from continuing because they were 'too anxious' about grades and other stuff.

I'm male and I was the only LatinX person in my CS major; there were several more in EE by comparison. Part of the problem might be cultural pressure...my parents were extremely disappointed when I decided to major in 'Computer Science' rather than a major with 'Engineering' in the title. They did not get that it was part of the school of engineering, that for all intents and purposes I was an engineer, and the job kicks ass. They wanted to be able to say I was an 'ingeniero' to family in Peru. I ignored them.

As for bias in interviewing, I think it's really hard for non-POC to understand the more subtle parts of what sucks about interviewing. Even tho I grew up in the states and have been around white people my entire life...there is something about the way most caucasian Americans telegraph (or don't) feelings and communicate during a technical interview that put me totally on edge. I get anxious with the 'Zuck' white guy personality type and somehow these feelings of being poor, being bilingual, going to a shit public school, etc bubble up in my head while I'm trying to rotate a binary tree. The two times I interviewed onsite at Google I couldn't escape the feeling. It felt like the 'whitest' place ever and that everyone I spoke to was Linus Torvalds or James Damore or someone like that. The fact they didn't seem coached to be friendly added dramatically to that effect.

It feels stupid to say but when I interview with people of other races, I feel more confident. When I interview with immigrants as well. It's my personal bias that I need to work against.

EDIT:

I'm not arguing that these anxieties are rational or desirable...they simply exist in my mind and that makes interviewing more challenging. Just as a musician may fear they'll forget their parts when they go on stage even if they are virtuosos, these sources of anxiety are real. For engineering interviews, not acknowledging some of these issues lowers your signal to noise ration. Someone might be a fantastic engineer but a 45 minute interview might present enough anxiety that they won't be able to show it.

I think it’s inherent in a free ad driven product that I spend as many minutes per day browsing through images and videos. It’s like television; it’s not like IG wants me to look at one high value image and call it a day. If I listen to music all day however, I am still going about the rest of my life. Instagram success means my direct attention...direct attention is easier to get with racy photos and surprising content.

If instagram's product KPIs were more inline with what I wanted as a user, this would be great...but they're not and my explore feed is frequently filled with models, child musical prodigies, and other popcorn-esque content.

Compared that to Spotify, whose goal I presume is to get me to listen to more music and buy tickets and merch through their occasional marketing.

I'm a music snob but damn does Spotify get me great recommendations on new releases, my discover weekly, and more. Not only that, I've bought tickets through their frequent listener promotions probably more than 10 times at this point.

Formik does this for forms. It’s great.

My fiancé is an elite opera singer. I’m a programmer/founder.

She has spent years and years perfecting the way she practices, sleeps a ton, and hustles hard for gigs. She’s highly systematic as to how she memorizes her music, learns how to pronounce words in different languages, practices technique.

Less successful singers in our network can’t be this efficient. They struggle at sight reading despite years of practice. They take hours to learn new music as opposed to minutes. My fiancé takes minutes to learn music and hours to perfect. They work their ass off practicing their Italian accents but are never quite perfect.

My fiancé works hard but all her work has compounded over the years because she has an incredible talent for memorization, languages, and likely perfect pitch.

I’m a good programmer, not great like John Carmack. I get stuff done but I have to work to the point of exhaustion at times. Personally I don’t think this sort of elite relaxation is available to everyone and may be just specific to musicians.

So true. If you can’t code for 6 hours straight without ignoring the fact that a job change can have an incredible impact on all your life goals and personal relationships, why are you even a coder bro?

This process is so weak, when I heard about it in 2013 I was like...why would I ever want to work at firebase?

I found that with vaping I just bought more Juul pods. Cheap, easy, minimal immediate side effects.

Tobacco had similar issues but I just couldn't smoke tons of cigarettes all day.

Both bad, I think stepping down nicotine works for some but not for me. You gotta do what you can to quit :)

If you are trying to quit, which it sounds like you are not, you have to unlearn this aspect of smoking. Obviously as a smoker, I loved doing that!

It's just not good for your health or happiness. I was especially worried whenever I was going back to the bar/restaurant/office wondering if I smell too much like cigarettes

One thing that gets lost in Juul and vaping supporters is just how bad nicotine addiction is for your personal life. I recently quit nicotine a few months ago and it made a big difference for me.

Nicotine withdrawal kicks in very quick which is why smokers take constant breaks. The anxiety, the grumpiness, irritability and anger you feel as a smoker when you are without nicotine will piss off your partner, make you seem difficult to friends and colleagues and generally just color your world in a dark way.

Juul pods helped me stop smoking for a short period of time but I became an order of magnitude more hooked on nicotine. I work from home and couldn't go more than 15 minutes without sucking on that stupid device.

I quit smoking cold turkey 90 days and it's made a dramatic difference to my mood. I no longer worry about being socially outcast or being judged for blowing vape clouds.

Buster was doing lots of full time job stuff throughout this period. He was the head of product for the Slack Platform while I worked there. I think it’s pretty damn impressive he had time to do 750 words while having some very demanding full time roles.

cc all mental health professionals. It’s real expensive to go to any therapist; good luck finding someone less than $100 an hour. If you do find one, good luck getting through your deductible to actually cover it.

The shadiest thing LinkedIn has ever done with user data is buttress their recommendation algorithms. I used to work there and trust me the data we have on customers is neither nefarious nor used for shady things other than growth. The dark patterns deserve their criticism but we have a very minimal picture of someone’s life other than a resume and business connections.

Just do it. You will learn a lot and no matter what make a bunch of mistakes. Just don’t burn out. Work hard but make sure you spend time with friends, your partner, and most of all yourself just relaxing. Evaluate how you are working regularly and make changes. Forgive yourself for mistakes, errors, flawed thinking and keep hacking. It will not be smooth but entrepreneurship is awesome and you should go for it if you have the itch.

Yea I hear you. Not one I recommend watching!

Thank you. I’m definitely doing better now :) running my own startup and happy with my dog and partner. Suicidal thoughts and depression are phases you can heal from with therapy, support, and potentially medication. I feel strongly for people who are down—you can get through this!

Just an anecdote but at the depths of a bout of depression I had several years ago I decided to watch “the bridge”, a documentary profiling people have committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.

Suicidal ideation absolutely increased for me and I even drove up to a bridge in Spokane just to “think about it.” I thought about jumping for about 10 minutes before I got in my car, drove home, and set up some time to talk to a therapist. I absolutely can see how a movie can push someone over the edge. I was lucky to get home and see my roommate had invited a few friends over...took me out of my thoughts long enough to recognize just how close I had gotten.

If you are handy with Java, Typescript or Javascript, Dart is a breeze to learn. I didn't invest any time learning Dart to get productive with it while using flutter.

The idea, as far as I understand, is that the tunnels present new underground routes that can use central control of vehicles to manage congestion.

According to Elon, his investment in cheaper drilling tech will mean we will have many tunnels with relatively cheap to build entrance and exit points that are significantly smaller than subway stations.

These entry points will allow you to drive to and from your house, enter the tunnel system where some sort of conveyor belt/computer controls your car. You exit the tunnel and drive normal.

So the idea is that the tunnel exits will be _very_ near to your home. Otherwise it's dumb. I think what you are saying about large predictable roads is basically what Elon Musk is proposing but underground.

https://www.boringcompany.com/faq

I invited a collection of friends, not all of them knew each other, to meet every couple of weeks at a mediocre pizza shop in SF and discuss machine learning papers and articles. Some are PhD level experts, some are newbies, founders, all are engineers in industry or academia.

The group has devolved (or evolved) into lots of discussions of ethics in machine learning, online ads, etc. The last two sessions have been entirely centered around philosophy papers.

We've strayed a bit from math but it's a good group to learn with.

I think the choice of a shitty pizza shop is key. It's not popular so we always have room for the whole group of 9, we don't get distracted with exciting food options or drinking a lot. The only thing I don't like is that it's an all male group but hopefully that will change.

Lots of residential places have roads exactly like those. In Seattle in particular, it's not just suburbs, but roads filled with apartment buildings on either side (see the neighborhood capitol hill for example).

I like Musk's proposal for mostly autonomous tunnel driving because it actually seems much more feasible than handling every edge case known to man.

Look at the income distribution of new attorneys. It's very easy to get massive amounts of loans for the countless law schools out there but significantly harder to get a decent job as an attorney unless you go to a top 14 school.

Median salaries pool are much higher at the top yet tuition is really similar across all schools.

This is true with undergraduate programs as well. Median starting salary after graduation at University of Florida is 52k. FIU and UCF, both a few hours away with similar programs? 46k.

University of Houston? 53k. Rice University a few miles away? 64k.

I've named schools that are all pretty good...the story gets much worse with private universities that are not selective. There are always people who do fantastic regardless of which school they go to but in aggregate schools matter a lot.

Thanks for the feedback on the design. That's definitely the area I have the least training on so I appreciate the comments.

For sure, my co-founder had me make some last minute text changes and I will be continuing to do so. I've also got a bit to learn about accessibility for this project as well.

My co-founder and I have been working on products to improve the lives of seniors & make them less lonely for about a year now. After various ideas, we discovered that the biggest concern from most seniors when it came to activities, socializing, or otherwise getting out of the house was cost.

We also learned through meeting with seniors that they are far more online than people give them credit for.

Owly is at the MVP stage right now but we're building something that is somewhere between product hunt and Yelp to help seniors engage more by saving money.

I've got some known bugs but happy to hear complaints, critiques, and questions!

Fact. As someone who runs a startup that targets grandparents, they know the internet well. I’ve even had a customer say “why do young people think we don’t know how to use the web? We invented the fucking thing!”

Sadly, it’s basically impossible for me to play. Still awesome.

I grew up there, I'm a Peruvian immigrant and just don't understand why people think Miami is good for tech. Solid engineers just move to the Bay Area; who wants to keep living in Miami which has such a cultural aversion to education, a major machismo problem, and frequent flooding.

If you want to work with LATAM, hire Latinx engineers in the Bay (there are lots of us) and hire tech people in Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and Brazil. Lots of talented folks in all those places.

My girlfriend is a classical musician and it blew my mind how she only listened to music on YouTube. Nowadays I try to listen to classical music on YouTube to see the sheet music scroll by :)