worker767424

Something that's missing in all of this is why the author was into computers. They obviously were, and running a homelab is as good of a hobby as any, but to what end? Kids aren't learning this because why would they when they just want to watch Tiktok videos.

> "this is a cool web page! How can I make one?"

I sympathize with what's been lost, but what happened was people realized they didn't actually want to build a web page, they wanted to converse on a forum and share pics, and be entertained. Sure, you could publish anything you can imagine that's less than 4 MB on Geocities, but I'd rather have Wikipedia.

> Young people (on average) know less about computing than they did.

They know less about desktop computing.

This is confusing knowing how to use technology with knowing how technology works under the hood. I can drive a a car, but I'm a shit mechanic, and only vaguely know how to go about designing an engine.

I was commenting that it's weird for someone screening resumes to not recognize many schools. Hypothetically, I could see you going to Harvey Mudd (great school) and a hiring manager not knowing about it. All the resumes aren't from those schools, though. You'd think a Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, CMU, Illinois resume would have passed by at some point.

Caltech is 11 in CS.

> At that point I might as well memorize them all.

Read through the list. You'll probably recognize a lot of the names. Out of 50, if you pay much attention to colleges in the US, I bet you'll recognize 40 of them.

How can I make sure the next hedge fund I interview at know I'm a mediocre guitar player? Or is mediocre not worth mentioning?

In a way. It's also pretty easy to send your manager an email saying "My last date at mega/micro-corp will be X." Or ghost them. Don't, because it's not professional, but ghosting is one way to quit.

> I know the school, and I don’t know the school. I’ve never known any school so far.

Either you're interviewing bottom-tier candidates or haven't paid any attention to schools that are out there. If you're in the US, you should be recognize the names of the top 25 CS schools. You might not know their rank, but there aren't any obscure names on that list, and they graduate a lot of students.

> I consider it an important milestone.

Milestone in what?

"Pillage" is a little hyperbolic, and while I agree that it's probably not worth it, that giving up like that feels very un-Japanese.

Maybe it's not that it lost its way, it's that they made very good games that people wanted from 1998-2005, made reasonable followups, but what people want from games has moved on.

He turned the BitTorrent company into such a success /s

> 80% sure the last place I worked at had Non-Disparagement on hire.

You can always red-line the contract. Still, if I saw that, I'd be pretty worried. It's saying you can't even review them on Glassdoor, and I'd wonder what they're hiding.

Non-disclosure is on the way in. Non-disparagement is on the way out. Feel free to skip signing things on your way out, especially if it's involuntary.

On getting fired... It's usually an unplanned meeting shortly after you get in, possibly with HR present. Take a deep breath, and realize the decision has been made, and no amount of explanations, excuses, circumstances, or bargaining will change it. Keep your mouth shut. Don't bother asking them why; they won't say, and then you'll start guessing. There's nothing you can say that will help you. Don't sign anything; say you'll take home whatever documents they give you to review. Don't help them pick up your work where you left off--you don't work there, they made it clear they have no interest in you working there. Take all your personal belongings, return theirs. If they let you send a farewell email, send something generic (or not at all). As always HR is not your friend.

In short, keep every interaction as curt as respectfully possible. It minimizes professional impact, and if something leads you to legal action, it puts you in the best position for it.

Should have at least seen if they'd pay $32,000. Severance contracts are negotiable. You can even red-line them. Of course, the employer can and probable will say "no."

How is it that we vaccines we're confident are effective, but haven't been able to draw a conclusion on this, yet?

Colds are a bit different because of how many different viruses cause them. SARS-CoV-2 is still a single virus for some definitions of "single" and "different."

I think half the anger over the silly dance is people who are angry they can't do the dance or never put in the time to learn.

It's also not quite as silly as you'd think. I've programmed a lot and for a long time. Some for personal enjoyment, some for school, some professionally. That covered 80% of the dance and landed me good tech jobs. Working on my weaknesses in algorithms and doing leetcode for a month got me a very good tech job. Whiteboard coding will identify strong programmers who can perform under pressure and people who are practiced a lot of whiteboard coding.

Learning and reciting the silly dance is at least plausibly correlated with job performance, hence fizzbuzz.

> What makes you say he's bad at finishing things?

His game.

> What makes you say he never dug into the technology he's using?

The bit about using the ORM. He said he's been a programming since 12. Not being OK at SQL by the point he's at is a smell.

> My guess is that your lack of sympathy...

I'll halfway grant you that. I've failed more publicly and more spectacularly, but I'm a better engineer, so despite that, I'm still employable.

> mostly at companies I had ideological issues around

> I should have gone to a small, cheap island nation and swam with dolphins

> After some months of that, and with enough runway to go for another year, I went back to the game and finished it. Unfortunately, it wasn't as finished as it should have been

> questions about complicated SQL queries (I use an ORM

> they fired me after a few months because they found they couldn't bully me into working longer hours for lower pay.

> I really did say fuck it and just left the country to travel around and work as a digital nomad

I can't believe he'd post this publicly. The reasons he's unemployable are he never dug into the technology he's using, he's bad at finishing things, and he's a bit of a beautiful and unique snowflake.

This might sound like a nit, but I'd call it habit-forming, not addictive. I watched friends go from obsessed with Facebook when it launched to mostly using it for sharing family photos, and this is at a time when there was a focus on user engagement. It just seems like people lost interest too easily for it to be actual addiction.

> it's still an optimization

Maybe. Once you get to measures that have a negligible effect, weird things start to take over. Behavior change (feeling safer in a mask) is probably a bigger factor than the mask, itself, at that point.

I looked at some tech jobs in Wellington and shocked at how little they pay compared to SF. The cost of living in cheaper, but not that much cheaper.

They're already replacing cashiers with kiosks. No reason to think some of the relatively more mundane kitchen jobs aren't next.

Because they're treating it like a religion.

I saw a news clip of a woman getting vaccinated saying she trusts the vaccine because she "likes science." The vaccines appear to be mostly safe, but because you "like science" isn't a reason to trust them. What she means is she likes Mythbusters and thinks that's science.

> If outsides are so safe why are curfews still a popular measure?

I think California's curfew in the fall was later seen as ineffective. Why are they popular?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism

> ...wearing masks which have become semi-religious in their belief even though there isn’t really any actual solid RCT evidence

My favorite example of how it's become semi-religious is people wearing them on outdoor walks in the suburbs where, worst case, they'll with within 6 feet of someone for a total of 30 seconds. The virus spreads very poorly in those conditions. Ironically, you're more likely to get the virus at home from a family member, but there's been minimal push for masking at home because it's political suicide.

If it helps, a robot will be doing their job in 5 years.