I worked at Amazon to see if anything's changed
vice.com
vice.com
On the "good" part of Amazon at AWS, I had a laughably terrible hiring experience (I know I've told my story multiple times, sorry). They forgot to call me back on the scheduled phone interview day, my future manager who was supposed to interview me wasn't there the day they brought me in, they forgot about me during lunch, sat in a conference room for an hour, then went wondering around, thinking, nah, this can't be happening. After that I got a little snippy with them parroting back leadership principles. And then later it took them 3 weeks to call back (but at that point I wasn't surprised).
However, I like them as a amazon.com customer. I guess to make things awesome on the outside, those on the inside have to suffer...
Or, the two things don't necessarily have to be related.
I've never understood this logic. Amazon is making a ton of money (rightly so, imo), they could afford to trim down quite a bit. Why should those on the inside be forced to suffer?
Amazon's own official explanation is probably something along the lines of "frugality" (hey isn't that a leadership principle..., see I learned something from the interview after all!)
It's not a fair reflection of the company at large; recruiting is very often a shit show for all kinds of reasons.
I never before experienced the kind of rudeness and incompetence during hiring I had encountered while being interviewed in the Bay Area tech scene. Interviewers not keeping phone appointments. Interviewers blatantly not listening. Interviewers basically (incorrectly) implying that I'm lying. I will observe that the YCombinator companies fared much better than the above, however. Much, much better!
They seemed very surprised when he laughed and told them they were too late, he'd got work elsewhere, as if they somehow expected him to sit around on his arse waiting for the job.
I'm curious to know the company if you're willing to share because I grew up in Bellevue and worked at a software company downtown there as well.
I can say having been on the hiring-side of various companies for a while, most East Coast companies can go from looking at an application to hire inside a couple of weeks if they're slow, inside of a week if they're pretty well put together and can get enough people for interviews. It just simply doesn't take 5 interviews and two months to find somebody -- that's just ineptitude...and those companies' own internal metrics show all the process and hoops don't make much difference in final employee performance.
Growth, promotions, raises and other perks will come in a trickle unless you are a member of some political cartel in the company, because every one thinks they are special.
Recruiting is worse of course, because they don't generally grant easy access to their elite club.
I have personally dropped the ball on an interview once, had the wrong time written down to meet someone. Apologized profusely when i did arrive. :/
Having interviewed with Amazon, MS, Google, and Facebook I have to say MS was by far the easiest experience of the 4. Applied, a few weeks later they contacted me, 2 weeks later I did my interview, offer a day later. Facebook and google it was more like apply wait weeks for response, wait a couple weeks for phone screen, wait a week for resposne, wait a couple weeks for a second phone screen, wait a week for response, wait a few weeks for in person, wait a couple weeks for response. Amazon was similar, but at least that was over the holidays and I actually travelled for that one.
Whenever I really enjoy or am afforded a major convenience by some kind of technology these days I feel guilty about how much suffering went into my enjoyment. This ranges from video games, NLP, or being able to get food at 11:30 PM on a Sunday.
>What became apparent over my time there was that, whatever the dramatisation of previous investigations, working at Amazon is just shit – but no more shit than any other mundane, badly-paid job.
Examples:
* "I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave": http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f...
* "Brutal Conditions In Amazon's Warehouses Threaten To Ruin The Company's Image": http://www.businessinsider.com/brutal-conditions-in-amazons-...
* "True Stories of Life as an Amazon Worker": http://gawker.com/true-stories-of-life-as-an-amazon-worker-1...
* "Inside Amazon's Warehouse": http://www.mcall.com/news/local/amazon/
There is no "not us, our contractor" defence for this kind of thing.
Yeah, not to sound insensitive but those jobs suck by design. There's no pleasant warehouse job. Its backbreaking work, requires covering for those who called off so others get extra shifts, seasonal surges, etc. Work like that is a decade or two from being fully automated because its relatively simple and terrible dehumanizing work.
The white collar work won't be replaced by machines, unless strong HAL-like AI is around the bend, and its pretty obvious its not. They also have a higher barrier to entry and are very desirable, so people are rightfully outraged to hear how poorly devs and sysadmins are treated at Amazon.
Ambulances instead of air conditioners when it was very hot. http://business.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/05/25/11877532-after-...
Getting sued (and winning, ugh) over forcing people to stand in line for 30+ minute security lines when coming and going from work. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-c...
Battling the unions in Germany. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/05/business/workers-of-amazon...
and just random bonus articles http://www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_...
In sum, Amazon should be mechanistically compelled into socially harmonious behavior, not shamed into it.
Almost any improvement will be at the expense of cheap goods, so get be prepared to pay for that improvement too. I believe this is the key reason we never see anything done about immigration in the US or pollution in China: at the end of the day, we care more about the cheap goods than the workers or pollution.
Perhaps they will have a harder time finding talented developers though?
I don't see any reason companies should be exempt from criticism for legal-but-immoral actions.
We very much can consider whether Amazon is indecent. Whether Amazon is lawful is a decision for the government regulatory boards.
> "I can't quit now, because the cost of getting to the agency for the interview and drug test – and getting here today for just five hours' pay – means I'll have made a loss." Talking about circumstances this is a bad one.
"My name is spelt wrong on my badge, mate," I told him
"Oh, that's fine, nobody cares about your name here anyway; we just need your barcode – that's all."
Also a quote to keep in mind from Chris's Rock, "If Bill Gates woke up tomorrow wit Oprah's money he'd kill himself."
A lot of people don't have that option
I strongly doubt a fluent, well educated westerner in China was going to be stuck with working on the factory floor as a career plan.
I'm guessing if you are in an enclosed area, the air-space rules that Amazon keeps fighting don't apply?
* It also required 2-3 just out of high-school "technicians" making about $15/hour who oversaw the whole operation as well as a "maintenance" crew of about 3 people (to repair machines). I think there were a couple of managers thrown in as well. Still, much cheaper than the 100 employees we replaced and I am pretty sure those employees were happier doing something else.
AFAIK picking is very hard to automate because it's very hard to match the dexterity and eye-hands coordination of a human being.
[edit: grammar]
My neighbor and I both work pretty hard on our lawns, but his always looks better because he doesn't have a giant maple tree blocking all the sunlight. He probably think's he's just better at lawn work.
Huh? According to the same article, the book said that he should have been given a copy of his contract and a daily list of goals. The book also said that there should be a careful point system to judge employee performance, not "late twice and you're sacked". Furthermore, are 11-hour shifts really by the book? Does the book say three of those hours have to be paid overtime?
Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive is the relevant set of rules. The key one is "there must daily rest of 11 consecutive hours per 24-hour period", which an 11-hour shift complies with.
> Does the book say three of those hours have to be paid overtime?
No. They're just paid time like any other shift.
(Before somebody jumps up to wave their hands about opting out of the working time directive: as noted on that page, there is only one rule that you can opt out of, and that's the rule about a 48-hour maximum working week. There is no opt out for any of the other rules.)
It's definitely a personal thing, but after all sorts of job roles, I'd probably think the quiet, repetitve tasks and 'timing' aspect of the hourly job actually kind of okay. Gives me time in my head without having to make small talk. Or deal with bad customers. I guess what I'm saying is that I'd still rather take the Amazon job than one where I had to work directly with customers in service or retail. Especially if said customers trend toward elderly...sure, moving boxes in a hurry can be stressful, but I'd prefer that to trying to explain/sell to a confused, sometimes impatiently angry monied elderly person, because boxes lack emotional outbursts.
Time for disruption?
Well, to soften this up a bit, this is what it is like at every warehouse in the world. Of course it isn't going to be anything like a nice tidy whitecollar office job. The article sounds a bit like it was written by someone with no prior experience with this type of work.
Instead we should realize what Amazon is (or overlaps with), and get upset about poor work conditions in the entire sector.
Presumably Angnieszka?
Since there have been bosses and profits there have always been shit jobs, and until we're replaced by more efficient robots, they'll still be there for us to complain about.
This sums it all up nicely.
I absolutely would accept those employment conditions if I didn't have any other options and needed to make money to survive. I would also spend my free time learning a skill so I could get a better job at some point in the future.
> It's a good reminder of privilege.
It's not a matter of privilege, it's a matter of ability. In tech more than any other field, because you don't need a college degree to get a good paying job. You just need to have the desire and ambition to learn.
What makes you think those people have free time after 12.5 hour days and a commute out to the middle of nowhere?
I think that's what the OP called the "privilege". Those that have it, don't see why others can't do the same. It comes from having a completely different world view and priorities. That's why it is common to hear "how come they don't sit down learn to code and become full stack developers, that would be so easy."
Plenty of people I know had access to the same thing (most of them actually), they just didn't pursue it. It's frustrating to hear people make assumptions about myself and others in the industry. I had someone talk about how "disgusting" it was that there were so many white males in tech. Of course, she said this to my face, and I'm a white dude. Believe it or not, it didn't feel great.
It's as though a bunch of people who had zero interest in tech for the last 20 years suddenly think they should have all of the same skills and opportunities as us that have spent our childhoods buried in it.
You probably have a better paying job and more free time than than most people (and as a nice side effect than people who bullied you probably).
The privilege mentality is thinking that you made the decision to go into tech consciously because you knew it was going to be hot in 20 years and will end up with a well paying job. But it sounds like you didn't, just like me, you were poor, and was really passionate about computers. Being bullied (I was too) also had a side effect of isolating you for longer periods of time.
Looking back, I'd like to think of myself as having great insight and a keen sense of predicting the future, knowing that computers and internet will be big and I'd have a way to crawl out of poverty. Then I methodically executed that vision over the next 20 years. But, that would be dishonest, because it is not how it happened. Maybe it did for you...
In general, yeah, it would be great if more people would start coding and things would be more diverse. But sometimes we make it too simple and we re-write memories and history as to how we started coding and think -- why can't coal miners just start writing single page apps in React.js over a few weekends, why can't this part time middle aged mom from Walmart who was laid off as an HR person just write Android apps and make more money.
> why can't coal miners just start writing single page apps in React.js over a few weekends, why can't this part time middle aged mom from Walmart who was laid off as an HR person just write Android apps and make more money
Absolutely, I don't think they can. They don't have the free time, and they're worn out after a long day of work. That's not the same thing as privilege though.
> privilege - a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people
My point is that we didn't grow up in some special group that gave us more access than others.
> The privilege mentality is thinking that you made the decision to go into tech consciously because you knew it was going to be hot in 20 years and will end up with a well paying job.
I'm not sure what the "privilege mentality" means (genuinely -- not trying to be salty), but of course I didn't have some master plan to make money in 20 years. I got into computers because they were the most amazing and powerful thing I had ever seen in my life. Does that make me less or more privileged?
I guess my point is: if a person wants to say I got lucky by being interested in something that ended up being world-changing, absolutely, and I recognize that. If a person wants to claim my background is privileged and that's what enabled it all and stake claim to what I have as a result -- well, they don't know anything about me, and there's a good chance they're wrong.
> If a person wants to claim my background is privileged and that's what enabled it all and stake claim to what I have as a result
Which literally nobody does. That's the price of using jargon and expecting everybody to already understand you, and it's what drives me batshit. Privilege is not referring to the genesis of your accomplishments. Privilege is referring to the difficulty slider. And very, very few people in tech are at 'normal', to say nothing of 'easy' or 'very easy'. And it is generally considered gauche to roll one's eyes (and while I don't think you necessarily mean to, I kind of get that vibe a little? not maliciously) at somebody who's cranked up to 'holy shit impossible'.
I am at 'very easy' on that slider, even though I've had things that (to me) feel really shitty: my mom left town when I was ten, my brain doesn't quite work right all the time, and I am punishingly introverted. But the sum of the things working for me that were an accident of birth--I'm white, I'm male, I was born in America--is so huge by comparison that I have it on easy street. And it doesn't diminish me to acknowledge that. It does behoove me to recognize it and to help people who aren't so very fortunate, though, which is why I get real salty around here when the cryptoracist and outright racist contingents start pontificating at length about "the black mentality" or other garbage thoughts. (Which I am emphatically not saying you are doing, but happens all-too-often around here.)
Chew on this: http://danilocampos.com/2013/02/unpacking-my-knapsack-the-pr... - Danilo is an HN poster (one of my favorites) and this is a tremendous thing that's worth reading. Because he hits on something that's important, and I wish was more the focus of these discussions than "pfft, you have privilege," when he says: "Any pride I take in that hard work is dwarfed by the anxiety that I don’t yet know how to help others get to the point where they can work as hard as I have." (A lot of what defensive people see as "shut up" when the concept of privilege is invoked is really "think about what you should be grateful for, and extend graciousness to others." But that requires an understanding of the concepts involved, and...argh.)
Yes, this is a problem. If you push back on it, some people will say "this is Social Justice 101", completely missing the fact that an intro course spends a lot of its time teaching jargon.
> Which literally nobody does ... > A lot of what defensive people see as "shut up" when the concept of privilege is invoked is really
Well, having been in many of these conversations, I can say that yes, there are people who use the word privilege to mean "shut up". There are people who genuinely exhibit more of an interest in clawing people down than in spreading understanding.
Understanding how privilege operates and recognizing ones own is still super-important. It is particularly important when trying design solutions (like hackerspaces, bootcamps, tutorials, etc) to social problems.
But it is also important to recognize that sometimes people just use social justice discourse as a way to feel righteous while carelessly insulting people they just don't like. It is important to be able to recognize when someone has no interest in problem solving and to disengage from conversations with those people.
Thanks for the link by the way.
And there are definitely assholes who use the concept as a bat--one can be an asshole and still be on the right side of history, of course. "Literally nobody does" was referring to the strange bugbear of "you are privileged and thus deserve nothing you have earned," which is generally a (defensively or politically motivated) misreading of "you've been really lucky, you should pay it forward."
Except that I have met many people who hold exactly this belief.
> And there are definitely assholes who use the concept as a bat--one can be an asshole and still be on the right side of history, of course.
How can they be on the right side of history if they hurt the cause they claim to fight for by being an asshole? If you've moved the needle in the wrong direction, you're worse than the people who sit idly by and do nothing, IMO.
> Trying to maybe teach a few people a few things is most of why I hang out around here
Ugh.. gross. You're here for the wrong reasons.
Think about it from the accused's point of view. Yes they were lucky in many ways, but they also worked hard to get to where they are. Then someone belittles their efforts, claiming it's simply because they are privileged. Privileged? Even an average person has to overcome a ridiculous amount of adversity to be successful. Calling someone privileged immediately makes the conversation antagonistic.
Instead, I think it's much more effective to use "lucky" or "fortunate". People won't shy away from those adjectives. If anything, they'll readily accept them. This starts the conversation on a much friendlier note and makes people more likely to work with you.
Edit: Looking up Danilo, I see he perfectly fits my example of ruining discourse by being overly antagonistic. When Y Combinator posted about their efforts to improve diversity in startups[1], he chastised them and misconstrued Sam Altman's words.[2] When Altman asked him for advice and help, Danilo just got angry and accused Altman of trying to get him to work for free.[3] This sort of behavior is extremely counterproductive. It polarizes the conversation and alienates large swaths of potential helpers.
1. http://blog.ycombinator.com/diversity-and-startups
"I am incredibly privileged" is not a statement that offends me, because I actually know what it means.
As per your edit: I don't necessarily agree with the level of vitriol, because I have had good interactions with Altman, but I'm not in Danilo's head and I am not part of the groups who YC was (not so much anymore, to their credit) and HN is (routinely even today, despite the very good efforts of people like dang) marginalizing and attacking. HN is a business asset for YC, and if you want somebody's help to improve your business asset, you pay them. Especially when you screwed up in the first place.
Privilege is a loaded word so I should have used another one perhaps. Privilege is strategic position of advantage. You have or have access to time, money, wealth, power, super-power etc that other don't have. And it is relative.
I'd say tech people have that power compared to workers in an Amazon warehouse. We can work from home, can demand our own salaries, jump to cool exciting companies. Don't have to break our backs. Instead of thinking about what to feed the children with we think what type of Apple watch to buy etc.
So far we haven't talked how each individual or cohort as a whole reached that level. Some worked hard, some didn't. Some got lucky by picking the right field to go on. Some were just passionate about a hobby (me). Some were bullied and got to spend more time inside (me) and apparently OP.
> Privileged? Even an average person has to overcome a ridiculous amount of adversity to be successful.
And now if they live in a Western country, with a great healthcare, good weather, police protection. They are privileged compared to those that are being bombed, raped, or are starving in many parts of the world.
And my point is, looking back those people will say "I am here because I worked hard and everyone one else who is complaining is kind of lazy and should have worked hard as ". I say "it's complicating" and people will often attribute too much to their hard work and discount luck, and other factors -- family connections, good neighborhood, safe area, a good health insurance, maybe a specific literacy program promoted by their government, or other factors (even negative ones like "I was bullied nerd so I was in the house more and that gave a me a chance to focus more on study").
> Instead, I think it's much more effective to use "lucky" or "fortunate".
Those are good to describe how they got to the position of privilege. Which often has a mix of things like luck, hard work, and others. That is why used the word. Using something like "strategic life advantage" sounds a bit odd though.
That's a ridiculous straw man. I don't think anyone in this thread would agree with that statement.
> Those are good to describe how they got to the position of privilege. Which often has a mix of things like luck, hard work, and others. That is why used the word. Using something like "strategic life advantage" sounds a bit odd though.
Of course we all rely on a bit of luck and help from others. But the problem with telling someone you've never met before that they need to "check their privilege" is that you don't know a thing about them. It's offensive in exactly the same way that accusing the poor of being lazy is. If you don't take the time to get to know someone and learn about what they've been through and why they are where they are then you don't get to say things like "you're lazy" or "you're privileged". If you'll pardon my French, "you don't fucking know me".
Nobody here does but it is a common attitude, I have heard it many times from conservative acquaintances and family. This phenomenon was epitomized by the "welfare queen" PR term in US in the 90s and early 2000s, and to some extend I believe "unwed single mother" in UK. It as a figure put up a prototype of how poor people are just waiting for handouts, are lazy and if they just work harder would be successful business owners.
> to "check their privilege"
I didn't say that. Is that a strawman I see ;-) ?
> If you don't take the time to get to know someone and learn about what they've been through
I didn't direct my comments at anyone in particular. I responded to a comment because they brought an interesting point my mind but I didn't accuse or insult them.
What I said in general is that there is a tendency for people who have made it to ascribe their results to their hard work and willpower even if in reality it was a complicated mix of country they were born, parents, good networking (friends), etc.
> If you'll pardon my French, "you don't fucking know me".
Alrighty then...
They don't need to know you to point out that the hand you are dealt becomes the hand you play--and that, statistically and sociologically speaking, the hand of a white man is overwhelmingly superior, almost without exception, to that of a black woman in the United States. It is not, to borrow a phrase, about you. It's about systems, and it is largely accepted that the rush to personalize situations is done by people in a position of relative privilege. Because you want it to be about you, so you diminish that privilege. It's a natural reaction; I've done it too. But it's wrong, and you are punching downward at people who have it worse than you, and you should stop.
> It's about systems, and it is largely accepted that the rush to personalize situations is done by people in a position of relative privilege.
It's about systems and it's about individuals. People who fight for social justice personalize situations all the time. When statistics come out that don't favor their agenda, they shift the focus to the personal level as well. And they should, because we need to all remember that it is about the individual. As much as sociologist and statisticians would like to believe, we do not all fit neatly into well defined groups. It's insulting to insinuate that we do.
Or how about a Roman general picking apart less nimble Greek phalanxes with a manipular legion? Would you apply the word there?
It is more often used to try to stereotype and discriminate against someone, insisting their setting as being higher than others. And when this brought up, the general response is to then say the issue is really a bunch of different sliders, such as one for race, one of gender, one for sex, one for sexuality (and all of these are still simplified to stereotypes). It is often accompanied by an insistence that we pay extra attention to some sliders are more important than others, with the side bringing it up tending to shift focus to the sliders that minimize the view point of the one being told they are privileged.
Privilege is an attempt to simplify complex issues in a manner that benefits certain positions and it can be used as a thought terminating cliche.
For example, privilege being brought up here to detail how it is privilege for some to have turned to computer as a coping mechanism for the abuse and exclusion of their peer groups; that they had free time to focus on computers because their peers didn't want to spend time with them is a privilege.
I see a discussion ensued ;-)
The privilege mentality I define as a worldview (or call it an attitude) where those who have the privilege (it doesn't have to be money, it could be time, social status, freedom, or health, or any other significant advantage) have a hard time understanding the position of those that don't have it.
This usually happens when talking about wealth as privilege. And manifests in examples where rich people will look with disdain at poor people and will label them as lazy or "in charge of their own fate, yet deciding not to take advantage of it" etc. This often happens because they look back at their own lives, and think they got wealthy / powerful through sheer willpower and hard work. In reality it turns out a nice inheritance helped, going to an Ivy League helped, being lucky to invest at the right time in a market worked, having the right friends at the right time worked, etc.
What has happened in that case is the privileged person re-wrote or re-interpreted their own history to make it better and more agreeable story (rather than, well I got lucky and inherited a bunch of money, it ends up with, I set up a successful hedge fund with my college buddies etc).
But I was referring to "privilege" not just as wealth but as being in the tech industry, where wages and demand is much better than other industries. Good programmers can often ask for high salaries. They can work from home, etc. That is not comparing with Donald Trumps out there, but comparing to those that work for TSA, or McDonalds or Amazon.
What often comes out of it is well meaning ideas like "teach coal miners to program" and so on, because looking back it seems like programming is pretty easy and with a bit of free time on the weekend one can easily end up with a 6 figure jobs. In reality things are different and a lot more goes into what makes a person now successful.
The truth, as always, is that it's a very nuanced issue, and we both have valid points. You're right about people who inherit all their wealth. They often lack basic empathy for their fellow citizens and lack the understanding that they didn't truly earn what they have. And I'm right that there are people out there who truly do, against all odds, become successful without much help from anyone else. I think it's extremely important to recognize both of those truths and call them both what they are rather than yelling past each other to push our own political or ideological agendas.
I struggle with this on a daily basis, especially as a former liberal.
That would be pretty much be my answer.
Yeah it is nuanced issue and I agree it is hard to figure out. It is not even the divide between the two people, but even between the same person who was poor and now maybe made it (through a combination of factors: work, luck, etc).
I often have to stop and remember what it was like to ration food or stand in long lines to get bread and so on. And I find myself criticizing like I mentioned others do (why don't they learn to program it is easy or why don't they work 3 jobs, save and invest etc.) it takes a bit of introspection to catch myself not doing it.
> I struggle with this on a daily basis, especially as a former liberal.
I don't even know if am a liberal or conservative. Probably a mix depending on issues.
That a person was lucky enough to turn their coping mechanism for abuse into an above average career is not privilege at all.
For example, when I first started using computers as a kid, it was at a time when less than one in eight households had computers. That's pretty privileged.
> I'm not sure I would describe that as the height of privilege. I spent most of my childhood living in a trailer.
It's not a spectrum along a single axis. You can be privileged in some areas and not in others.
1. you were born a white male 2. magic privilege stuff happened to you 3. you got a cushy job with perks you dont deserve 4. now shut up and check your privilege 5. we need less people like you here
Nowhere in this chart is tens of thousands of hours spent thinking about numbers while non-techie people went to parties to play and drink.
Yep, that reminds me one of Phil Greenspun's smug blog posts from a while back: https://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2011/01/26/rethinking-99-wee...
There's always a way and all this talk about "privilege" just simplifies the lives and struggles of people into some silly political game. It's just not that black and white.
Depending on your situation, free time that you can actually use to learn a skill -- after you've commuted home, fed yourself, done household chores, assuming you aren't too exhausted to just pass out or do something mindless -- may also be a luxury you don't have.
My takeaway from the fact that you don't need any particular formal education to get a well-paying job is that the tech industry hires and pays people without regard to ability.
Like, the entire reason FizzBuzz has gotten popular is that it's not just possible but common to have the résumé of a senior developer (i.e., to have held all the jobs you'd expect a senior developer candidate to have held and be paid for those jobs, i.e., to have passed multiple tech interviews) and be unable to write it. You can argue about whether "privilege" got these people in the position of being a senior developer candidate, but it certainly wasn't ability.
Are the cases where people make a common mistake, but are quickly able to fix it, counted (such as forgetting to fizz and buzz for certain numbers).
What about cases where the people can code the algorithm, but can't do everything to get a program that will compile. For example, using Visual Studio with C# means some of the basic scaffolding is almost always generated and thus many developers aren't able to recall what that scaffolding is off the top of their heads.
Or is it limited to cases where they just sit there staring at a blank sheet of paper not sure how to proceed?
http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/
http://imranontech.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-dev...
My reading is that the scaffolding isn't the problem, writing that loop and conditional, within the margin of error of what compiler errors / an IDE can tell you to fix, is the problem. So essentially yes, they're staring at a blank sheet of paper.
That's getting a lot harder to do in the US these days.
They only get 13 hours a day away from work, minus long sounding (and expensive) public transit each way, so good luck with that. Of course its temp work so between jobs, as long as they somehow have a place to live and food to eat, they could study, in theory.
Also most unskilled labor jobs are already staffed with skilled laborers. Everyone in unskilled labor older than about 20 already has some story along the lines of "I was a (blank) before the (accident | disease | downsizing | divorce) and now I'm here in the warehouse, no jobs you know." Why would a newly educated nurse or soldier get hired when there's a better qualified experienced one currently underemployed and working next to the clickbait author? There would be very little point in spending time and going in to debt to become a nurse if the best job a nurse can find is the one he already has working in a warehouse.
I also support such social measures for others as I feel it would be economically inefficient if I was still working a menial job instead of what I do now just because I don't have enough desire and ambition to work that much on top of studies.
With software, you need a cheap computer, access to the internet and time to teach yourself. That can cost about $300 and $10/month in many places.
With almost anything else you need all of the above plus a college or other formal education. The barrier to getting any sort of college education, not to mention even getting admitted to one, is far higher. You usually need thousands per month and 20 hours/week of scheduled time to pay for the costs of college.
There are also other minimum wage jobs you can apply for with better conditions, like coffee shops, restaurants, gas stations, retail stores and so on. And in developed countries, you have the option of saving up for your computer with your minimum wage job and then going on welfare.
Also, don't underestimate the value of an educational environment. You can spend a lot of time banging your head against the wall if you don't have an effective way to reach out for help. A mailing list or IRC channel is only useful if you have the skill and focus to compose your question coherently.
There are also people who do not do well at all in an educational environment, and the lack of one is a benefit towards learning programming for them.
All that most people are saying is the barriers to becoming a software developer vs. other professions are lower and cheaper than most others. There are still barriers and challenges, just like everything else in improving one's life.
I used a book called Learn to program, by Chris Pine. There's a free version online. After that, I did some stuff on code school.
I did misread this. Still I'm not sure this is true. Is it really the case that only in computers you're not required to have formal education to get a well placed job? That seems unlikely. I don't feel that I have enough information either way from my own experience (in computers, without a formal education in it and knowing many others lacking formal education) but it seems like an exceptional claim that there is only one field that works this way. Construction is the first other than comes to mind. It's also funny because this is one of the things we get criticized most about, the lack of professional qualification while using potentially very dangerous tools.
Computers are not dangerous of themselves, they are dangerous when you rely on them. When you screw up software it's really easy to hit the reset button at no cost. When you screw up fixing a device, it might cost you money.
Also in construction you usually need some sort of formal education for the better paying jobs. Plumbers, electricians and so on have certifications, licenses apprenticeship programs.
A lot of people 'get there' by doing precisely this. Because to many people this doesn't look like a problem, it would look more like an 'opportunity'. You have no clue how hard people will try(work) when failure is not an option.
>I absolutely would accept those employment conditions if I didn't have any other options and needed to make money to survive.
But you do have options, so you would never accept the conditions. That's the point he was trying to make.
Oh, you must be very young! :)
The point for me is recognizing that yes, I have been fortunate in my circumstances (solely by being born in a first world country in this century I was ahead of the majority of people born ever).
Having free time to pursue your interests is a luxury.
If I could extend that same privilege to others I would in a heartbeat because I think it would be both morally right and for the greater good.
If I don't recognize my already good place in the world I am disrespecting the people who worked hard to put me in the advantaged position that I am in.
Even this concept bothers me. Why do we in the "first world" (God, even the term sounds pretentious) assume we are living the height of human existence? If you live in the US, you're likely working longer hours than you would in almost any other country, and your fulfillment in life likely comes from acquiring, storing, and maintaining stuff. Contrast that with, say, rural Mongolians, who live off the land, have much tighter communities, and are largely oblivious to the problems we in high society have. Assuming that the rest of the world wants to live this insane existence we do is more offensive than not recognizing one's privilege, IMO.
> If I could extend that same privilege to others I would in a heartbeat because I think it would be both morally right and for the greater good.
Again, one man's privilege is another man's hell. I would, for instance, not want to be a trust fund baby, living a life where nothing is a challenge, where I can never truly know if someone's just being my friend or love interest because of my money, and where the rest of society stereotypes me because of a situation I had no choice about being born into. I'd rather be a rural Mongolian, TBH.
I also think it's complete folly to assume that working in tech is the height of society. It's not, which is why a lot of people don't pursue it. It's fucking tedious most of the time, you sit with your neck craned over a computer for 8+ hours a day and develop bizarre RSS conditions and nothing you build is actually material. It's not like the trades where you move your body during the day and can actually step back and see what you built or helped build.
I am definitely not one of these people that things we should teach everyone how to code. Programming is lucrative right now because not many people have a passion or a tolerance for it but the need for it is increasing. It's that simple. It's not about privilege, or race, or sex, or anything. It's just another tedious, painful thing that needs to be done that some people have a higher tolerance for than others (usually white, nerdy, socially-awkward people).
En vogue Orwellian group think for simple minds. Implying that some have undeserved fortune is reprehensible with this complete disregard for context.
Would agree.
Please eliminate name-calling from the comments you post to HN, as the site guidelines ask:
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
The lens of deservance is not productive.
A nontrivial part of the money coming in came from investment capital; the remainder came from enterprise sales. In neither case did the decision to give us money have a basis of a rigorous technical analysis of our engineering output, and especially for the VCs it was based on a perception that we were a good investment.
What fuels that perception? Get some founders from famous schools. File some patents because patents look good, not because you particularly need to protect these inventions. Engage in thought leadership. Land a customer because you care about their name more than about how much they'll pay you. Convince some Gartner analyst who'll never use your product that you're innovative. Bring in a management team with connections. Design products for what journalists want more than what end users want. Hire some kids from famous schools.
(I should note that I believe my previous employer was nonetheless steadily solving actual problems, that they were paying me to solve actual problems, and that they were well-managed. But in order to keep doing that they had to make it to profitability, and the path there involved the above pressures.)
Business people don't care about privilege directly, but if these pressures are around -- which they are in practice -- privilege ends up being correlated with having positive leverage on profits.