bitshepherd

I'm going to have to be the dissenter here.

Namecheap also does domain name front running and tasting, so it's not really any different.

Not really, no.

Raising the price of gas negatively affects the working poor more than helps the environment. That subset of society may not live in an area accessible by transit, or their employment requires them to be in a different location than is feasible to travel to by transit.

Trinity and Beyond narrated by William Shatner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_and_Beyond

This happened to me at Amazon the first time I visited HQ.

The interviewer was standing about six feet away intently watching for every mark I made, which made me freeze up and start rambling about stars shining, or something equally nonsensical.

Having deployed and maintained both Confluence and MediaWiki, users like Confluence better.

Going from that to MediaWiki would feel cheap to them, or they just wouldn't use it because it would feel "hard".

As a former devout Fluxbox user, I concur with this comment. I use a pretty bog standard Gnome now. It's not really an active thought so much as something that Mostly Just Works.

My productivity is about the same, since I use the same applications. The only thing I don't have is an incessant need to fiddle and tweak.

Coincidentally, some of those same people who would say they don't primarily consider degrees will outright ask about education background when talking to a candidate.

The conversation will go generally positive. A month later of no contact/ghosting, and a form letter rejection pops out, with either the position being closed or "Unfortunately, we have decided to pursue other candidates whose background appears to match our needs more closely."

And that will be that.

> That doesn't make sense to me... I think it's more likely that tech workers get higher salaries because they were/are in high demand, not to prevent unionization.

The inverse is exactly that, though. Higher wages give certain skilled individuals enough personal comfort to the point that they don't feel they need to stick their neck out for some group of randos. Sure, that $125k job with a small sack of RSUs looks pretty on paper, but break it down with all of the extra-curricular obligations, the occasional long week that happens a little too often, housing costs, commuting, and it doesn't look too appealing.

Once you have enough 'highly' paid individuals in a group -- we'll cut the number at $100k, even though that's the poverty level in the Bay Area -- then a backbuilding narrative begins to create itself, that because 'everyone' is at a a certain level, it's kind of just okay.

The trope of high demand, low supply of qualified individuals is pervasive in tech recruiting, to the point where some of the same individuals being oppressed question if there's an actual problem. It could also be explained away as that we're all just that unique and special, but that's stitching together another reality entirely.

Instead of agreeing that fellow humans are being oppressed, we tech workers muse and question the merit of sticking together, for one another. We question the quality of one's skills or ability to comprehend with not another thought. We even sometimes question if we're overly compensated, when overt actions or results would prove otherwise.

Sysadmins have guild-style organizations (see: USENIX, LOPSA) but they've not had as much impact on hiring and income as would like to be believed. If anything, they've served as a filter for HR, who immediately tried to weaponize it.

I'm not saying a traditional union is the Way, but tech workers as a whole are severely lacking a cohesive voice, any voice. The egregious hiring practices, which have been turned into a game at the highest levels, are symptoms of this madness. When was the last time a doctor had to bring Frankenstein's monster back from the grave with no tools while blindfolded? In tech, that's a fairly typical interview question.

It shows in the amount of overwork-related discussions, shrugged off as part of being a highly-paid, salaried employee. All the while, sharing on LinkedIn this great new shiny your company's CEO really, really wants people to see.

The incentive to come together as a group is not about how much an individual is paid, but to come together over a common ground and influence change that benefits the many over the few. Income is one of the most common things to throw out there because it encompasses pretty much everyone's life.

An individual can be paid handsomely, even if the group average is a fraction of the individual's number. Though you believe you are paid well, and you may very well be, it does not mean actions do not happen to suppress the momentum of someone sitting a desk or two away working toward the same goal as you.

With such a level of cynicism, nobody would ever be hired.

People game the system because a system exists to be gamed.

You'd be surprised. :)

I was almost there with you until the bit about the gig economy. This reads more like an advert for Upwork.

People giving up leverage with labor just gives 'them' the upper hand. Why it's so hard for tech workers to band together over something as common as income is the problem, regardless of the disparity.

Teachers in my area are striking over much less money than tech workers fritter away on a daily basis. Sometimes it's worth standing outside with signs and waving at people passing.

This does not reflect my experience at the >10k employee level of company. I've had a more reasonable work week out of the 150 employee consulting firm than I have the 10k employee public software company.

At the >=100k employee, multiple-decades-in-business, old guard type of company, I had the inverse of what you're relaying, as well. On-call was routinely referred to as the 'week of hell'. Fires tended to crop up due to complacency, general feelings of 'job security', and lack of routine upkeep. These sessions in self-flagellation are dutifully shouldered as 'just the thing it does around this time of month'. These aren't fly by night, back of a postcard companies, but instantly recognizable brands, known as market leaders and 'best company to work for' in their community.

The long hours aren't encouraged, but outright mandated with 50 person standups to keep the Confluence pages up to date when email would better suit the task. We mustn't forget the alignment meeting to have the pre-meeting to talk about the plan of the backlog grooming planning meeting.

My last 'coding interview' consisted of a debugging a broken live VM, with a Java app waiting at the end of the rainbow.

The job was for working on bare metal provisioning using yaml and Python, but I could 'use your favorite programming language'.

Before you think this was some third-rate body snatcher, it's a more well-known name that you've heard of.

They still ghosted me, after telling me what an 'amazing' job I did.

Retired In Place is likely what was intended here.

Not long ago, I worked for a brand you can find in every Best Buy in America that also sells direct on Amazon.

Returns would come back used/opened/filthy by the crate, and they get shuffled right back in with new inventory. Everyone wins, everyone loses.

As a senior-level self-taught, I redacted this post because of my views on whiteboard coding. Downvotes are not cool.

People like to network. Consider it a business card with words.

You're overthinking it a bit, and that's understandable.

Records and letters, in my experience, are more doing-motions-to-move than actually doing anything. In general, nobody cares if you had a spotless record, or were employee-of-the-interval unless it's a well-known company, in a highly visible situation. Many of these things are simply expected, so long as you present yourself as a level-headed individual that can GTD. At best, they're a conversation point at some point in, before, or after, the interview.

Once you're no longer in the employ of a company, it's more or less a done deal, especially in terms of a layoff. Next year's taxes are about the only thing that matter here on a long-term basis, and if they've been paying to UI (legally, they should have been).

Mark the point of employment on your personal permanent record (read: your resume/CV/online presence) and talk yourself up a bit in terms of what you've done with honesty. That's one of the hardest parts when you've been freshly laid off.

In the immediate future, what needs to happen is ensuring continuity by making sure that you have your UI filed with the state and ready to be processed, while looking for that next place. They tend to ask if you've been looking for work, and you will have to show proof if they ask. The cushion, while it lasts, tends to be helpful in such a time.

Looks like we broke it.

Funny enough, this comes up fairly often. The basicish feel of the site belies its true nature, and it's downright intentional. Also, only brainy smarties would intentionally go to a 90's looking website to talk about technology and whatever else nerds and geeks discuss.

The negative sentiment usually comes from front-end oriented folks that have things twisted. I'm not disparaging, simply noting on my observation.

When I'm in the employee seat, I try to avoid managers that use blanket statements of people. The 'best' workers, where everyone -- including their manager -- goes when they need the hard questions answered, will usually quietly exit. They prefer not to cause a big scene, knowing their value. Value usually has a big catalyst in this, often appearing sudden and unexpected, exit.

Some of these 'total failures' will go on to outdo even their own expectations. Some will do as you prophesize and 'fail' in their burnout, get fired and fade away. The strong ones will come back from it. People quit people, not jobs.

Ad hominem is the best way to get the point across. Don't ever change, sir/madam.

Loved Austin when I lived there. I went back earlier this year and it just wasn't the same. The hypergrowth over the past few years has turned moderately annoying traffic into a driving nightmare, which compounds everything because Texas is very car-centric.

I'm moving for more than cheaper rent, but thanks for playing. There are people that make six figure salaries that can barely afford to make ends meet due to the cost of living, and that is a fact. Try swallowing $4000 a month in rent for the suburbs, after CA taxes, before utilities/food/gas/car upkeep. Even people with six figure salaries are having to face a reality that they are being pushed out in favor of people with even more money. If I want to buy a house, guess what? I'm commuting from Manteca or farther. Affording Tracy would be a luxury. It's a numbers game and more people than you're willing to admit are hurting.

For a single earner making at least $100k a year, I'm looking at moving away from the Bay Area for any notion of not blowing $50k on rent every year.

I can't even touch the housing market in an area inconvenient to my work without literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in liquidity. That is cash that I simply do not have, nor do I have wealthy relatives that can front me the money. Please don't assume that just because an engineer has, what looks like a high income on paper, that they can even afford houses that cost millions of dollars in a high cost of living region as the Bay Area.

My coworkers that have set down roots here have to drive hours, and they're also making "at least 100k a year". What about the engineers that need jobs and homes, and the people that move just for their job? City's full, go away.

Someone has the idea behind challenge/response.

You don't have to answer the challenge with a 100% truthful, legitimate, accurate response, because the point is to NOT provide an answer that could be guessed by framing the response in truth, or even reality. So long as you've picked one that matches with what you've preseeded, use a random word/phrase as your response.

q: What is the name of your favorite teacher? a: bumble bees in the desert

Push at the end of the day and watch as the SPOF VCS server melts from the 17:00 thundering herd.

Instead of commit and push at the end of the day, make smaller commits that are easier to digest. Giant spaghetti patches make for sad times in review.

No degree, no certs here. I take that back, one expired cert from years ago. I meant to renew it, but that was a few years ago.

It gets you in the door when you have no other in, but not too far. If you go work for a bozo shop, they'll put more weight behind a current cert. However, if you get hired, do what you can to not rely on certification alone. Your peers will smell the bullshit, even if management outwardly loves your certification.