I'll be blunt: your hiring process sounds very similar to what this article is trying to ridicule.
If I was handed someone else's machine preinstalled with a load of tools that you assume I know how to use, I'd probably excuse myself from your interview. What if I use a different keyboard layout? What if I don't use a Mac/Windows? What if I've never used Swagger?
I worked with React almost exclusively for ~5 years. I got so fed up with everyone reinventing the wheel on every project, coming to Angular (late) was a massive breath of fresh air. I now spend more time building valuable features rather than discussing changing state management libraries and people banging on about hooks all day long. YMMV, and I'm certainly in the minority, but I'd probably choose Angular over React for any new projects now, personal or professional. The only thing I really miss is that JSX is much more ergonomic and the devtools for React are a bit better.
Sadly, this attitude is endemic; the only goal in life is to make things as easy as possible for yourself, rather than leave things in a better state than you found them. You might be giving yourself "extra life" (the massive assumption being that repairing and reusing tools is a net negative timesink rather than a positive pleasure) but you're taking life from the people at the other end of your supply chain.
Buy-Now Pay-Later is largely unregulated (in the UK at least) and makes money off predatory tactics. I make no comment on the ethics of staff that choose to work for VC-backed loan sharks other than to say if you've been let go it might be a good chance to reassess priorities.
.edu is a TLD for US based educational bodies. So the reason you don't see a cookie banner is because the majority (AFAIK) of US states don't mandate a cookie banner, unlike EU and UK based sites (like the Natural History Museum, based in the UK). Does this mean the Natural History Museum is a less authoritative resource than anywhere else? I'd say the opposite, actually.
And for the "change a tire" example using a .edu TLD. That's a fantastic example of how to find search results that are almost completely useless for anyone outside the US. What's a "tire", anyway? Oh, you mean "tyre". What's a "flashlight". OK, you mean a "torch".
In summary: there's a world outside the US. It's lovely out here.
> And before we continue, let’s make it absolutely clear that we have no control of the color of the text in this very article, as it is hosted through Medium.com, which features poor visual accessibility of their site design. Further, Medium prevents their users from selecting black text as a choice. While Medium’s “Fischer-Price-simple” content creation is easy to use, it is also extremely limited, and fails in accessibility in areas beyond color. Perhaps this article can serve as a wake up call regarding this issue.
So - why on EARTH are you publishing there? And for what it's worth, the areas that fail WCAG AA for colour contrast on this page are areas entirely within the control of the publication.
I don't think I'd be where I am today if it wasn't for sitting physically next to people and watching what they do, picking up on non-verbal cues etc. I love working from home, but I also have the mentality that we all need to "pay it forward" sometimes, so I tend to spend a couple of days a week in an office with (typically) more junior engineers who may not even have space for a desk in their flat share. The "I'm alright, Jack" WFH crew really get on my nerves - it's a disappointingly selfish mentality.
I studied for my MSc in the UK mid-career. I didn't really do it for the potential payrise (there is/was none), I just did it because I enjoy learning about computing and wanted to do something structured so that I stuck with it. It cost me about £10,000 and I paid monthly over the 2 years so it wasn't so bad financially. I think you can take a loan in the UK to cover postgrad stuff, but I didn't bother, I was in the fortunate position that I could afford not to.
I think the point is it doesn't work. The author had the time, inclination, and technical ability to get through the bullshit and eventually cancel. A lot of people won't.
All I'll say is, good luck. I was/am in the same boat and unfortunately for me it'll be the difference between staying in the role and potentially moving on in the future. WSL2 is decent, but there are some fundamental incompatibilities that in some cases make it unusable in a professional context. Everything feels a bit second rate to MacOS/Linux development - tooling, hardware, OS design, peripherals. Ultimately, I'd do almost anything to go back to a Mac and feel like I'm working at 100% efficiency again.
WSL + Windows Terminal could be great, but if your organisation uses Windows Secure Channel, you can't use Git on it. Which pretty much renders it useless for me. I endure Powershell, but even after six months on Windows, for a professional software developer it still feels like coding with boxing gloves on. It's a second rate experience vs. Mac/Linux in almost every way.
I don't think I'll ever understand why there are about 8 versions of System Preferences in Windows 10. And they all look different. Can anyone tell me what the difference is between Control Panel, Settings, Computer Management, Systems Configuration?
I bought a Brother HL-L5000D mono laser off eBay for £50. It's been going for 2 years and hasn't needed any maintenance whatsoever (or any new toner). It just works.
Quite intrigued by this, and will definitely step through the tutorial. It will be interesting to compare it side-by-side with Adonis (and possibly Nest).
There is no "popularity" tab? There's a "satisfaction" tab which basically tells you nothing.
The "usage" tab tells us what really matters - that in the last 3 years essentially nothing has changed despite the hype. Angular/Vue/React/Express dominate.
Then I would suggest the public sector probably isn't for you, which is fine! But clearly, many people do enjoy working there and are quite happy with a lower salary.
I don't know about that particular role, but I can say that many people work in public service knowing full well they could probably double their salary in the private sector, but do it anyway. Mainly because of the large amount of annual leave and a pension that is unbeatable in the private sector, but also the opportunity to do really interesting work in genuinely unique environment, rather than work for another food delivery startup.
If anyone is interested in doing similar work at UK Parliament, we're on the same journey that UK Gov are on, although not quite as advanced yet so there's a lot of scope to shape what we're working on from an early stage: