Bahamut

That doesn't appear to be true: https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/em...

> Also, restrictions on your efforts to communicate with co-workers cannot be discriminatory. For example, your employer cannot prohibit you from talking about the union during working time if it permits you to talk about other non-work-related matters during working time.

I fall under this bucket - Twitter is a platform that has always been hostile to nuanced discussion because of its history with length restriction of posts. At that point, I rather use anything else for discussion on ideas/domains.

That page may say that, but I still maintain a ton of Python 2 work stuff that will never be off of Python 2 while the work ecosystem lives.

Aren't an absurd number of websites made with WordPress still?

I think it depends on what you want - I have some pricier headphones myself & I used to own monitor speakers too, but I never think to use any of it with a phone. I use a phone to be on the go, and having big headphones don't go with that well unless I'm sitting for a long time like an airplane.

So far I've been dealing with being on the go with the PowerBeats Pro - it's good enough for my purposes (light, good battery life, sound is good enough, somewhat compact), although I have it mainly because the AirPod Pros were not out then.

Apple didn't have mass layoffs when it was almost dead I have been told by engineers who were around at that time. I'd think Apple is one of the safest tech companies to be in as an engineer when it comes to times like this.

85% as of a couple of years ago.

This comment should definitely be emphasized as the golden path to be working remote for a company like Apple. Once you prove your worth as a top performer, you might be able to flex remote working, or maybe remote working on a temporary basis, but to demand it upfront without proving yourself is not something a company like Apple bends to.

I have only seen one person in my org successfully get to work remote in my org, he even got to keep his Cupertino comp for the period of time he worked remote - he had to come back to Cupertino within two years though or he would get let go. Otherwise, I have seen top performers get to work remote anywhere they wanted for a period of time as long as they got their work done (the longest I have heard of someone doing so is one month working from Asia and not in an office). I've done it myself for 3 weeks.

Being a top performer is a lot of hard work though, and you do end up sacrificing work-life balance to some degree, but Apple treats their top performers very well.

Edit: I take that back, I did once have a teammate in a remote office in Europe who only goes into the office there once a week. He does good work though and knows his stuff, and the more remote offices probably have a little more flexibility in some regards due to having to keep to Cupertino hours.

I've heard multiple cases of people in NY turned away from testing as well even though they have been in close contact with others who tested positive or live with them.

It's very bad there I'm hearing, I think the best we can draw is that NY is probably very much underreporting the true number of cases due to test kit limitations.

Except wire up routing in a strange way, or pick a library for form validation or form framework, or come up with odd ways of structuring tests, picking a strange approach for animations, etc.

This is the cost when app architecture gets delegated to your developers over a high quality central solution, the quality is as good as your developers.

React has some really painful breaking changes over the last 3 years - Angular did breaking changes in a far more user friendly way. The last breaking change that happened from 16.8 to 16.9 partially ended up resulting in us calling bankruptcy on our main app and helped make the decision easier to rewrite it from scratch on a team where the core members who worked on the app have over 70 years of experience amongst 4 devs.

I wouldn’t say the same no matter the domain - junior devs can and will surprise you, and because React gives you less guardrails for app architecture, it likely has the potential to go far worse.

There’s a fair number of people who work weekends voluntarily - I’ve even gotten bug reports on odd days when corporate is shut down like Dec. 26th.

My manager and some on my team at Apple generally discouraged me from working on weekends - I’ve worked some on weekends mainly to de-risk accomplishing certain tasks due to me being in an optimal state to tackle some issues & having some spare time. Occasionally I have to fix operations issues on weekends too, but those get resolved generally pretty quickly.

All in all it’s a YMMV situation. Most people in my org keep to normal hours, have same development timelines, and are pretty happy (no yelling/screaming, most operate somewhere in the 10-4 time range give or take, 5 days a week).

The ironic part is the military lives on regular text messaging as it is.

It's not as easy to just refactor when it comes to UI oftentimes because you are often writing completely new UX.

Everything I hear from friends at all these companies is that for stress, Amazon > Apple > Netflix > Facebook > Google. Netflix seems far less stressful than Apple from everything I've heard from employees that have worked at both.

Tech worker doesn't necessarily mean software engineer.

Typically to be allowed to work remote at a FAANG, you need to have spent time doing critical work onsite - this is still a very rare arrangement.

One secret is that management in most companies, even FAANG, often will let you work remotely from time to time as long as you get your work done - I have often worked while traveling in order to cut down on vacation day usage without complaint.

Otherwise, I have seen Netflix offer remote positions on occasion, but know that such positions are extraordinarily competitive. You will not get such a position by being just an above average dev.

I feel your pain there, definitely experienced it at most prior companies. Unfortunately good engineering management is uncommon in our industry :( .

I was going to reply something to this effect - it's ok to climb or whatever, but do things on your own terms without caring about how other people are doing. You can still be happy for their success and should be, but as long as you give an effort you're happy with, that should be enough.

Downleveling happens, but the $ calculation almost always makes it out very much ahead. At my previous job at a startup, I was making $160k base with stock options as a tech lead/engineering manager, but at my current job at a FAANG, I was offered the same base but with $15k signing bonus and $105k RSUs that are now almost worth double as a high mid-level engineer. For me, accepting the offer was an absolutely a fantastic financial decision. Responsibility-wise, I never felt like I was given less responsibility than at a startup either.

What the downleveling does is align expectations correctly, since most people not at a top tier company likely need some time to ramp up to the expectations of the next level up. What senior/staff/principal mean at companies like Google/FB/Apple is very different from what it means at most companies.

100% agree - I joined a FAANG company 2.5 years ago and was given a $280k package as a mid-level. After two annual review cycles, I currently make $318k. My initial RSU grant is about to hit double what it was ($105k initially), and my refresh RSU grants are close to hitting 50% above their initial value (two grants of $125k) still as a mid-level. Benefits like 401k matching and ESPP stock purchasing also push up effective compensation.

I worked about 5 years in startups and small companies beforehand, and I probably work about the same as in a startup (long hours, partially because I'm a workaholic/ambitious), but with far better quality of life due to management being more competent and working with me to manage stress.

Some comments on specific bullets:

> - Vesting schedules can vary. Some are monthly, some every 3 months, some annually. Try to avoid anything less frequent than once every 3 months. It can create bad incentives for the company to get rid of you before a big vest date.

I have not seen Apple trying to play that game at all (their vesting schedule is every 6 months) - my understanding is if the company wants to get rid of someone, they give them zero refresh RSUs come annual review time as a strong hint.

> - Vacation days vary but 4 weeks (20 days) should be considered the norm for the US (30 for Europe/Australia).

Apple is a bit abnormal in that they give you 12 days to start, but the company typically has ~18 company holidays. Creative folks could negotiate with their manager to make those more flexible with comp time after showing competence.

> - Unlimited time off is bullshit. Think of this as no time off.

I agree for most companies, but Netflix I think is an exception here - my Netflix friends all enjoy copious time off and still get sizable annual raises, one even being offered a promotion to manager.

There are different ways of making teams more productive than doing just technical work.

For my own anecdote, I often can fix a lot of bugs/feature requests that come by in < 10 minutes, and often will. As soon as it is revealed that another dev will start contributing who has no prior experience, I stop most of that work and let that person take on some of those tasks & do the leftover ones. Mentorship/growing developer capabilities expands capabilities long term, even if the dev ends up moving to another project.

I also spend the most time in meetings of any IC on my team - reducing how many ICs are in meetings frees up their time to learn and grow.

I often float ideas to people for approaches to problems and designing apps/systems/features - I’ll also let others do the same. However, I also often take a light touch and leave ultimate decision making to others so they can gain that experience even if I disagree. Letting others take ownership improves the team’s capabilities.

There are many ways to expand productivity of those around you that even those who aren’t as technically gifted can do. Leadership is a very underrated part of being an engineer IMO. I do all these things as a mid-level engineer in title, but gained massive respect from management & senior ICs where they come to me for advice/ideas. I don’t fall into the trap of jealousy that others are getting credit/hampering my ability to get promoted because my work speaks for itself & I celebrate when others do well - I have no reason to feel insecure, and so help unlock my team’s productivity by removing that ego in my actions.

Slacking in Apple? From what I've seen, Apple engineers probably amongst the hardest of the FAANG - probably less so than Amazon if I had to guess, but I know my Google, FB, and Netflix friends do not work nearly as hard.

Most math you learn in undergrad was invented 200-300 years ago - 50-200 years ago is grad level material.

If it were something worth asking to figure out who is a good hire, maybe - however, it's viewed as irrelevant at most jobs, so why waste precious interviewing time asking about irrelevant grades?

It's a waste of time, and thus unreasonable thing to ask about, wasting a candidate's time and the interviewer's time in revealing how little the interviewer knows about effective interviewing.

Great content alone won't maximize stickiness - better UX than competitors is also a major selling point. For example, on Netflix you currently don't get ads, which when compared to broadcast TV or even some streaming services, you have to suffer through (seeing ads on YouTube even while paying for a subscription is an example of user hostility).

Competitors don't sit still either - they're busy trying to put together a package of good content and improved UX as well in order to better compete with Netflix. Incumbents generally are harder to unseat though, whether it be in politics or in business, the bar that needs to be passed is "Why should I move from/pay for X?" - in this case, Netflix wants to be the X.

To add to the comments here, I highly recommend networking locally at meetups if you can - those have the best bang for the buck for first positions that I've seen for people.

Modules avoid the variable issue because ‘use strict’ is applied by default for them.

IMO JS as a language is in a much better place than Python currently. I end up frustrated a fair amount by arcane errors in Python due to less expressive constructs or some wtf issues like unexpected variable scoping within Python modules.

They just happen to be people who has done Java - we hire the best devs we can, regardless of language experience (my own team has interviewed/hired people who have done primarily Python, Ruby, JavaScript, Clojure, and/or Java). A couple turned out pretty well, but several turned out to be much more junior than we expected. I should add that I have no love for Java myself, I rather not be writing Java at all if I can help it.

If there is one thing this profession has taught me about hiring, it is that it is very difficult to predict who the top performers will be. Blanket assumptions will often prove to be not true when searching for the cream of the crop.