ElysianEagle

> visiting their friends, families and having constant stream of guests over.

Except that these sorts of visitations / gatherings become far less frequent in suburban settings unless you have the good fortune to have many of your friends / family living close to you.

I live in SoCal, which is far denser than many other parts of the US and despite this, the sprawl is immense - far greater than many other large cities of the world. It doesn't help that public transport is a joke as it takes hours and hours to get anywhere using that and you'd still need a car anyway for the last mile or so if you're heading into a suburb somewhere.

Living in a suburb isn't all bad, it has its perks but it 100% takes a significant toll on your social life for most people I know and have known. I've lived in NYC and other "proper" cities before and this is actually one of the things I miss most about life there - it made it way easier to spontaneously get together after work or on the weekends because of the smaller and much easier commutes.

I’m guessing you’re being downvoted by those who think your comment is encouraging unethical behavior.

While I certainly don’t think it’s ethical to do so, I did wonder the same thing - would companies start putting measures in place to verify you’re working from the same general area as your initially provided address? Eg, sifting through VPN log files to geo locate IP addresses etc.

Exactly this! I'm not sure why people assume WFH must mean you're literally confined to your home/apartment for the entire duration of the work day. Unless you have to frequently get on calls requiring a quiet space, you should be fine working from cafes, co-working spaces and yes - even other countries if you so choose to (for short periods of time at least). I've been doing this at my current workplace as have a number of others I know.

I realize that the study was specifically talking about brainteasers, but I wonder if irrelevant algorithm questions have a similar motivation? I was once asked at an interview at a FAANG company to come up with an algo for finding the longest palindromic subsequence (!). At another I was asked to get all partitions of an integer (https://www.whitman.edu/mathematics/cgt_online/book/section0...).

I'm pretty certain I'd never be working on problems of that nature as part of the role.

> one issue with the SF/Seattle-type areas is that you can't afford to be out of a job for very long

Absolutely true. Some years ago a contract gig I was working at in NYC was abruptly cancelled, and the following month or two were pretty stressful as I watched my emergency funds get so rapidly depleted due to the high COL there. Thankfully I was able to line something up but it was a valuable shift in perspective.

And as much as I'd love to do the 9-months-out-of-12, I'm not sure there's an easy way to pull that off in the US (or anywhere really).

It's this scene (around the 3:55 mark in this clip):

https://youtu.be/_IrCgt-Bt1I?t=3m55s

It's my understanding that all the countries in Europe where salaries for software engineers are high, have rather strict immigration policies.

I read a really interesting book that talked about precisely this (among other things), ie, how in the past people were content to be known in their little circle for whatever expertise they possessed, but now, with the internet and globalization, you're always reminded of how much better any number of other people elsewhere are.

This is the book:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1929774761/?tag=greebookgrou-20

I worked contract for a while in NYC. The pay was great but the contract was abruptly terminated with just a few days notice about a year or so in. I landed on my feet but don't think I'd go contract again because as a single individual things can get pretty stressful, as you mentioned.

It seems to work pretty nicely, however, if you have a partner that has a stable, full-time gig while you work contract. The full-time gig usually has higher stability + health benefits, while the contract gig brings in more money. Also, if your contract is suddenly gone, at least you don't have to jump into survival mode ASAP since there's still money comin in.

That's the most common arrangment I noticed among my contractor peers at least, at the time.

The other thing I learned was that I was only entitled to unemployment support if I had been on a W-2 sometime in the previous two years in NY. While this was not the case for me, fortunately, I had been in CA on a W-2 so I qualified for unemployment from CA. Had I been contracting for more than two years straight, that support would not have been available. Something to keep in mind.

Agree with all else you mentioned, though.

I remember reading this excellent little book with very easy to understand explanations of some of the basics re. permutations and combinations, back in school:

"Mathematics of Choice: How to Count Without Counting" by Ivan Morton Niven

https://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Choice-New-Mathematical-L...

That survey shows that ~27% got in through some sort of connection, but the remaining ~73% didn't. So roughly 3/4 of those surveyed didn't use connections to land gigs.

Am I missing something here?

I didn't interpret his post the same way as you did. I think he was suggesting that we, as programmers, tend to act in ways that are not necessarily conducive to maintaining our own job security. We often advocate (strongly even) for importing labor, making CS education and tools cheap/free etc. all of which while certainly making knowledge more accessible also increases the supply of coders.

And it's true, you definitely don't see doctors, lawyers, accountants etc. acting in the same way. I'm not suggesting a grand conspiracy on their part, but the certifications (difficult to obtain), years of schooling etc do have the effect (intended or not) of limiting competition.

It's hard to argue for better wages and treatment from employers on one hand, while simultaneously propagating the view that "anyone can do this". Well, if anyone can, then why should you get paid $150k/yr or more?

Agreed 100%. People seem to be focused entirely on the salary aspect, but my observations match yours quite well. I've worked for almost 10 years in the industry and with numerous H1-Bs, and I can't recall anyone being underpaid in total comp (I've had discussions on pay with a good number of them). However, they were always the yes-men - working long into the night to meet some ridiculous deadline, remoting in on weekends because the boss needed something done etc etc.

For now you can find it on the front page of the blog: http://lemire.me/blog/

This has been my observation as well, having attending such events off and on over the years as I moved between cities. The more extroverted people connected with each other and were never to be seen again after one or two events, leaving the shy/awkward around as regulars.

In bigger cities, though, there's a constant influx of new arrivals so it's not so bad.

May I ask what you do that enables you to travel all over the world? I've been thinking of ways that would let me travel more without quitting my job or switching out of tech entirely so any tips would be appreciated!

I've been thinking about this for a while myself. The current place I work at is extremely remote-work friendly, and we have people in many cities all over the US and the world working from their homes.

One possibility is to take up a job at such a firm, and then do your traveling while you work. I think it beats stressing out about finding a new gig every few months, at least. It's also easier if you happen to travel in the same/similar timezone.

> A few years after Uni, I started teaching myself Calc, Trig, Vector maths, Diff Eq and Physics strictly from what I have found on various sites, software and books.

Most unis I know of (I'm in the US) require those courses to be taken as part of your undergrad before you can attain the CS degree. Furthermore, with the prevalence of AP courses at the high school level, many students enter college already having taken some, possibly all of those courses.

There absolutely are places even in Manhattan where you can get at least beer for pretty cheap, like $3 - $4, depending on the night. Sure, there's more than enough expensive cocktail places around, but there's enough options for those not looking to blow too much on drinks.

But it could just as easily be argued that a highly political environment which necessitates such behaviors leads to poor morale, quality employees leaving etc. etc. which couldn't be good for the company long term...

> None of the successful asian tigers really follow a laissez-faire system. Pundits will argue they could have been more successful if they did, but I am not convinced.

Great post. I'm reminded of the book "Bad Samaritans" by Ha-Joon Chang.

High 200s as an individual contributor? That's north of what directors at iBanks make in many cases here in NYC (and salaries here are already higher than most other places for tech workers).

My guess is that you're working contract at a very lucrative rate? Or perhaps you're at some kind of financial firm that offers a hefty bonus :-D

I wish I could add more, but you've nailed it. Upvoted!

Not sure why you're being downvoted but this is a perfectly valid concern.

One piece of advice I can give is to try and line up interviews at the larger, more slow-moving places before you do the interviews at smaller firms which move a lot faster. Bigger places have more of a process in place for hiring so it can be a while before they can get an offer out to you, while smaller places can have an offer out in a day or two.

By following the above strategy, you can narrow the window within which you receive multiple offers to a few days, making it easier to ask for more time from any of the companies if you need it.

> This process has made me consider changing careers because it's so exhausting.

Me too. I'm so put off by the entire process but it seems that to stay relevant, you have to get lucky and end up at a place that keeps your skills up-to-date with opportunities to learn and use the latest tech, or you jump ship every 2-3 years meaning you're once again dealing with this insane pressure of interviewing. Throw in ageism once you get past your mid-30s or so and the mere thought of staying in the industry starts to look quite depressing :-/

>To make matters worse, everything from the smallest start-up to the largest tech company is adopting the same 'exclusive hiring practices' while they sit back wait for the resumes to roll in and/or send in work samples.

So true. I've found myself back on the market recently and what I'm finding is a large number of companies resorting to HackerRank pre-screens where they pick out anywhere from 3-6 puzzle-type coding challenges, give you an hour or so to complete them and if you don't nail them all, you're out. And that's just for the initial screening - there's no guarantee you'll make it past the N phone screens and in-persons you'll have after the initial screening.

Insanity, indeed. I hope someone writes a book on the crazy hiring practices in our industry, compared to other fields. Maybe I will someday - have to land a job first, lol :-/

I think the same thing that happened to quants on Wall Street will happen to those pursuing Data Science/ML today (if it hasn't already happened). Post-2008 there was such a glut of qualified quants that companies moved the goalpost and now it's very difficult to even be considered for a role if you don't have a PhD.

With so many programs and courses springing up about ML, in a few years I suspect there will be a glut of Data Scientists on the market, and once again companies will use the PhD as a filter. Already it seems like a good number of places will only hire PhDs for such roles.

Depends on the resources available to the company trying to popularize the product/idea. If it's a tiny start-up with limited resources, then absolutely, it's a huge accomplishment. If it's a massive company with tons of cash, together with the name recognition and momentum of n number of other products already out...then it's probably not that big of a deal, but still commendable, I guess.

Yeah. Tinder was willing to acknowledge and work with the fact that in seeking out new partners, the first thing that people notice and care about is physical appearance/attractiveness. If you can't get past that, there's little chance of anything happening no matter how awesome the other person might be in all other aspects.