"One interviewer blew cigarette smoke in my face, for example"
lol. Usually that costs extra.
474 karma · joined March 9, 2019
lol. Usually that costs extra.
A strongish opinion I'm starting to hold is that we are hitting peak software engineer and that with all the weirdness going on in terms of interviews, ageism, lotsa people getting pushed through college, lotsa general buzz, it's probably time for people to look elsewhere.
The tricky thing is to ferret out the business and skill set that is still young and getting ready to take off...or become a plumber instead.
Heck, scarcely anywhere I've ever worked still exists. They either faded away or were merged/bought into oblivion.
I hear what you are saying about the leetcode interviews. No thanks. Also, I agree on the decent paying middle class career angle, it was also quite a lot rarer.
It seems to me that to get 100 on that scale you need flesh colored Greek statues in the front yard. ( (prophylactic) yes yes, I know that they used to paint statues. Thanks.)
A friend of mine who went and got a job at Microsoft (a rarity in my circle, they don't seem to be heavyweights in the graphics or video world) and made a smart move. His deal was they he got the job but that he didn't go through any kind of interview rigmarole. The gig didn't last forever but at least someone was spared a bit of craziness.
The funny thing is that even cropping can be an editorial decision. All media lies to a certain extent.
My highly developed sense of old fartdom really comes out when dealing with modern cars with touchscreen displays.
Good question. Maybe different reasons. There sure are a lot of Nazi documentaries on cable.
. Twelve year old boys like snappy uniforms and the idea of a warrior ethos.
. You don't need a God to form a religion, sometimes a Devil is enough. The secular Left, now that culture has taken the place of economics as something to argue about, seems to have built a philosophy with Hitler at the bottom. Enemies are, of course, Hitler.
. WWII makes for a great story. Good guys, bad guys, worldwide (thus the name), heros and villains. Maybe the US is bored with Cowboys and Indians.
The minute their CEO went all-in on a US Presidential election well, that ol' Rubicon got crossed.
Of course, this all implies that vast swathes of uninhabital desert aren't ecosystems worth saving, which I suppose is the point of the article.
Personally, I think that the root of the issue is overpopulation. None of this would matter so much with fewer people and moving millions of them from the Third to the First World ain't gonna help any.
That's my take. Good for them for taking such a huge chance and seeing an opportunity to take a chance on technology that is just now becoming practical.
But...I can't see any reason why Toyota won't squash them like a bug in the low and medium end car biz once EV technology becomes a bit better and their adoption is more mainstream. It's a heckuva business to try to make a profit in in any case.
For all I know, maybe we've already hit that point.
Even the Soviets managed a rough balance between party/army/intelligence services, but modern surveillance and parsing have some serious mojo.
I guess it'll become more obvious once the CIA Directorship becomes an inherited position.
He doesn't come off very well in "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" either.
edit: as guessed, I got down voted for an Obama reference. Here's a quote from the book:
"First, Google demonstrated that the same predictive knowledge derived from behavioral surplus that had made the surveillance capitalists wealthy could also help candidates win elections. To make the point, Google was ready to apply its magic to the red-hot core of twenty-first-century campaigning, beginning with the 2008 Obama presidential campaign. Schmidt had a leading role in organizing teams and guiding the implementation of cutting-edge data strategies that would eclipse the traditional political arts with the science of behavioral prediction"
I'll propose an alternative idea. Repurpose the NSA towards hardening communications infrastructure in terms of both reliability and anonymity. Use them to help test software for vulnerabilities or even design better software.
At this rate, realistically, how many years until they (and their brethren) are the power behind the throne. In a surveillance era, some version of GoogleCIA will have the ability to move or alter elections in any way they like. It's always for the best reasons of course.
If a strong urge to write presented itself, I rather like the idea of self-publishing either a novel or a non-fiction book on something I know a reasonable amount about. It not only would force a certain discipline to writing and study for the author, but would serve as my tiny push towards encourage long-form reading again as opposed to the modern urge to read things that fit on a computer screen (like I'm doing here of course).
Wait, what?
Now that I think of it, it would be an interesting hobby to build a virtual you that does things on Facebook.
A large quantity of small farms, with slightly different approaches to problems, slightly different crops, different sources of financing, local ownership sounds like it might be more reliable in the long run. Admittedly, the efficiency of the system would suffer a bit.