blahblahblogger

Do interviewers still ask LC questions?

It's been a while since I last interviewed.

No.

> Tell that to Pieter Levels, who's made a fortune off travel planning software as a one-man shop.

A "fortune".

He has a lot of little projects, what % of his revenue is his travel site/app? And how much?

> In Minneapolis they want to dismantle the existing police force and replace it with another. A big reason for wanting to do this is to get rid of the problem cops.

So throw out the whole bunch because of a few bad apples? And what happens when the replacements have problem cops? Do it over again?

"Democratize".

lol. It's now a weasel word used by start-ups. Merits an eye roll before moving along.

I'm not trying to be a troll with this, but is that true?

I don't mean the fact that Iraq and Afghanistan were failed missions. But I've heard that 90% of the money spent on those wars went to Americans in some way or another, military contractors, suppliers, etc. all the way down the line to people like me in tech who may work on software used by the military.

Journalism is a punch-line now.

In my mind it used to be a respectable profession, but now it's just partisans against partisans. Even for issues that aren't on their face overly political.

Ah ok, definitely in agreement. Not a good move on their part.

Agreed. Obviously I won't be using GoDaddy. And I'm not a pro-lifer, I don't agree with the law.

> If you like Section 230 as it is, don't test it.

What do you mean?

Section 230 means GoDaddy isn't liable for hosting this site or a site by the Taliban.

Are you saying GoDaddy is testing 230? Or that if 230 is repealed there will be more actions like these from other hosting providers?

Agreed. My company (Pinterest) recently opened "new offices" for engineering talent, but they were in Mexico City and elsewhere.

The idea that we'll be competing with other US-based workers is wrong.

In the long run our remote-work "more freedom" fantasy will come to an end.

protonmail?

And that's crazy to me.

I would have figured that with the CCP having ~1.5 billion people to choose from, that they could move a few million Han into Tibet (current pop. according to google: 3,648,100).

Even just 1-2 mil could potentially accomplish the CCP's goals?

> It seems to be working for now - they've had 619 emmy nominations

I canceled my Netflix sub. Maybe this is why? Netflix became desperate to be legitimized by "big Hollywood"/"big entertainment". It used to be the new thing that didn't need to conform with its titles.

I also stopped Netflix at some point early in the pandemic. More and more I was seeing good shows go away and nothing decent replacing it. Then they had all these weird shows (Cuties?) coming around that left a bad impression.

Ultimately my canceling of Netflix went along with canceling big tech as my disillusion has grown across the board: * Amazon (this was hard to cancel, my prime subscription is still paid for the next 6 months) * Facebook (still use the messenger app to chat w/ friends though) * Google (search and Chrome - but still use gmail of course and at work)

I'm going to cancel something from Apple to do a full de-fanging of FAANG :)

Actually here's what I'll cancel: Apple Arcade. Everything they release now is just a "+" game from a non-Apple-Arcade title. "Somegame+" where it means no ads and maybe a little extra content. Originals on Apple Arcade are now harder to find and everything in my new/recommended/trending/etc is a "plus title".

Same here. I joined a company pre-IPO several years ago and even though though Wall-street just punished us (hint hint) I'm still making close to 1m per year due to stock appreciation vs when I joined.

Unfortunately I'm not worth getting paid that much, so my statement isn't a humble brag or anything, it's a realistic observation that my role + work isn't special and I shouldn't be making this amount. With rest/vest I will likely never get this high of a salary + equity package again.

In that sense I feel like I'm currently at my maximum earning potential even though I'm a mid-level engineer. Plus going back to leetcoding? Pfft.

I didn't like them banning episodes too. There were internal movements from Spotify employees (liberal Silicon Valley workers) who wanted episodes completely censored and removed. Joe talked about it a few times and I read some articles.

The irony is that by moving to these liberal employees' platform, he's losing influence :)

By creating a crappy podcast platform they've ensured they get what they want and he ends up diminished.

I'm honestly not a fan of this, despite how well intentioned it may seem (road to hell?)

AirBnB is honestly trying too hard with this PR move, it boggles my mind that shareholders don't reign in corporate stunts like this.

Yea really, has Brian even been outside the AirBnB offices in San Francisco?

I work near their office and remember a couple years ago they were offering their employees self-defense classes after several employees got attacked.

Thanks for the insight. At this point in my life I'm interested in WLB, sounds like engineers there may be more likely to be on the younger (in their 20s?) side of things.

> This won't be true no matter how many times you repeat it. "As a white person", I have been accused of racism. My response was to apologize and attempt to do better in future. I have largely been successful in those better attempts. When I have fallen short, I have apologized again.

Your experiences as a white person is not universal. The line you quoted is to accuse them -- your response seems to imply that you admit that when accused you were being racist?

The problem is that it is absolutely not okay to have to denounce yourself if you have done nothing wrong. Nowadays the accusations fly at a moment's notice, people jump to the most uncharitable of interpretations.

It would be better if the world followed some aspect of HN's guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

> I've been to one of such trainings that demonstrated what we would call "a struggle session" (using the Mao's terminology).

Did you have to take part in this in any way or just observe?

I've had to take training sessions that left me feeling ...hateful, to be honest.

In the Chinese-Maoist sense, a struggle session is where you are essentially forced to take part in some ritual denunciations of self or of your friends/family with the threat of violence or violence applied or looming in the background.

In the American version of this today the threat of violence isn't there but firing and shaming by coworkers/friends; And therein career/social death.

Your session doesn't sound like a struggle session per se (unless you had to take part), it sounds like a "training" where the professional victims shared their stories. But yes, it's a growing industry and they're paid handsomely to embellish their stories.

Honest Q for anyone here, how is Tesla's software-eng culture?

I've of course heard of people on the ground floor of Tesla (factory workers) not being treated well, I've heard of SpaceX employees having high churn as they get "burnt through", and of Elon being kind of an ass.

But having said that I have a Tesla and am one of those types that like to work on things that bring me value or that I can have some sort of tangible connection to.

I like the comedy channel "Awaken with JP" which has been brought on as an initial creator, there's an hour-long conversation w/ the founder on the channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAanV-46qd8.

I understand their logic of needing to not be beholden to big tech (a lot of the interview focuses on this), but overall I'm skeptical.

He doesn't identify with the Republican party, but he is a "disaffected democrat" - a group that increasingly has seen the democratic party leave them, rather than them leaving the party.

Joe may be considered right-wing by the "new democrats", who are the most vocal portions of the democratic party (the "woke" folks, even if they aren't the majority of the party currently, but they are becoming the future of the party) - this is despite Joe's views not changing much from where they were a couple decades ago. It's the party that's shifted.

It's like comedian Tim Dillon said, "I woke up one day and was asked if we should still have police and borders, and I said yes we should. Now I'm apparently a nazi." He is a comedian and this is somewhat tongue and cheek but reflects the disaffected nature and cynicism many of these folks now have for the democratic party.

Generally it's a normal thing to think about FAANG.

I've interviewed at a few and they were the hardest interviews I've had. So it stands to reason that the people making it through must be good.

Of course you could claim the people making it through just "leetcode" all day or whatever. But still we all know these companies because they're omnipresent in our lives, we use their products, we assume they've got smart talent internally.

right ... wouldn't they need to at some point start narrowing things down?

Journalism, "the 4th estate", in the past was used to go after the powerful but it has recently become the power.

It's a concerning change and I don't see it getting better. Maybe it's "corporate journalism" that is problematic.

> Long ago railroad networks, water pipes networks, and landline phone networks were private companies free to do whatever they please with the property they own.

I agree about social networks, but I'm not sure how good of an argument this is. In the US all those things (railroads, water networks, landline) have gone to crap.

I agree, I'm glad to see some bipartisan support for holding big-finance to some accountability.

I'm not so glad with AOC's response to Ted Cruz which was literally: "Your help is not wanted on this. If you want to help you can resign."

So maybe not that bipartisan. I'm not a RH user either and have no standing in this. But I'm watching with interest and hope there's some action on this.