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Online education, networking events, business cards.

Yup, having been burnt by a few bad e-book purchases (both, fiction and non-fiction), now I stick with big name publishers. Unless books are recommended by trusted Twitter or hn accounts.

There always will be certain percentage of people who will take advantage of return policies. I am sure at Amazon's scale, they can detect abusers easily. Most people hate to return stuff, and I think retailers take advantage of that, in general. That's why you see obvious lies in advertisements. Tesla's Autopilot mode? If society accepted returning defective or subpar products, then I doubt retailers will over-promise or sell subpar products.

Another option might be no returns at all. This way buyers will need to do their due diligence before buying and less likely to impulse purchase crap. Probably better for the society as a whole. Also things will be cheaper as retailers will not need to account for any returns.

Thank you, I am glad I am not the only one who felt this way. I did enjoy the game and finished it 3 times but all the hype had set my expectations really high. To me it was okay game with interesting storyline but not really amazing.

> These are then immediately followed by a 1 star review along the lines of "This is the biggest piece of junk I've ever bought online. Will be returning to Amazon. DO NOT BUY!"

I really wish Amazon expose return rate for each product. That would be better indication of customer satisfaction.

Also I wish there was not such a stigma against returning products. That would be a good way to drive bad players out of business. A few times when I returned something I apologized too much but store employees said that I am doing them a favor by returning it because this is how they determine what to stop selling in their store and prevent shier people from buying junk products.

I never had courage to watch any such videos. But read a few things about torture and such, just reading these things traumatized me and triggered years long depression and anxiety. I lost my faith in God and humans. I lost my desires to make the world better place. Now I just focus on my family and ensuring their safety.

I guess different people will react differently to such images, some may become desensitized, some will become more sensitive like you, or some will go in shock and depression like me.

I agree with statement "Hard deadlines for some sort of fix or workaround do exist". Key being get this done before CEO's big presentation or hard code something or CEO doesn't demo this feature. The point is no one dies if CEO doesn't demo it or feature is not complete by earnings call. Earnings call is known event, one should have better planned for it.

And that bring me to people literally dying because of bugs in software like in cars or medical devices etc. That might be one time where I would have no problem sacrificing my family time for getting bug fixed. But most other situations are just artificial and deserve no extra stress.

I am using this one: "Learn concepts and practice for the Kubernetes Certification with hands-on labs right in your browser - DevOps - CKAD" by Mumshad Mannambeth.

Usually, you don't lose a customer over a bug in two days. Customers are reasonable usually and understand that it takes time to fix bugs. Most of other reasons like CEO doing a demo at a conference can also be managed. I really don't see a reason for hard deadlines ever. In fact, hard deadlines is sign of bad management with notable exception of startups and other young companies with no managers or new managers.

Yes, this is correct response. This applies to both, bugs and feature deadlines. Early in my career, I would freak out whenever there were hard deadline, spent hours of personal time trying to meet deadlines. Now that I have friends in management and higher, I understand their motivations. They don't care about deadlines.

The best approach is to show concern, managers love meetings, so schedule a meeting to discuss. Don't fight back on deadline but try to understand seriousness and inform them of your status. Really it maybe waste of your valuable time, but your manager needs to report to their manager. They will love you for scheduling a meeting, you are speaking their language. Give them daily or weekly update via email or Slack. That shows them you are serious about deadline. They really just need to stay informed.

Finally, don't waste your personal time on fixing the bug after work. After 5PM spend time with your family and friends. Don't let management fool you in thinking that this is the last hard deadline. They will abuse you if you let them. It is just simple human nature. Don't let them abuse your coworkers either. It takes just one overzealous employee to destroy work-life balance for everyone.

Ever since I have realized that deadlines are mostly meaningless, I have missed many and there were zero negative consequences. In fact, opposite happens most of the time, management stop setting ridiculous deadlines. You just need to make sure you are doing solid work everyday for 8 hours and that's it.

There are some excellent courses on Udemy.

This is so common, we even have ethics training at our mega tech corp and we are supposed to report any such activities. A lot of time kickbacks are subtle though like unpaid internship at vendor for CTO's niece. Or sometimes it is a bit more bold like a consulting contract that vendor need to sign up with CTO's brother's firm etc.

The most obvious and legal form of kickbacks is just regular sales process that involve a lot of nice dinners or even trips to conferences on nice resorts. One of my old boss owned his company and it was so normal for him to go out for 4 hour lunches with clients.