bootsz

I'm in the northeast, and I've found them to be pretty common. But I've interviewed a few places that did not do them.

Yes, the system sucks. That said, there are ways you can deal with it. Everyone's situation is different, and I don't know yours. But there's basically two main approaches you can take:

1) Don't devote much time to studying, and focus on companies that don't rely on whiteboarding leetcode-style interviews. They're harder to find, but they exist. FAANG probably isn't going to be an option, unless you get lucky.

2) Go all-in on studying. Make the time. Even an hour a day. Cut back on work and social obligations. Chip away at problems for several months. Keep track of the ones you get stuck on and re-do them a few weeks later. Try some practice interviews at sites like interviewing.io with real humans, and listen to their feedback. Repeat, repeat until you feel more confident. It takes time, but it pays off.

Yeah. If I was paid the same for the actual output I produce I estimate I could hold the equivalent of at least 3 desk jobs simulatenously and triple my income. I suspect the same is true for many people. Large companies are not very efficient at utilizing people. Ironically I think companies in which people work remotely a lot tend to be the most results-oriented and less tolerant of people wasting time...because there is no way to keep up an illusion of productivity with “butts in seats”. So what you end up with is quite contrary to the myth of remote workers being unproductive.

Seeing studies like this publicized constantly, it's hard to take nutrition science seriously. I know bad journalism is partly to blame though. All this affirms is that we still know nothing really.

Someone should make a matrix of all possible high-X-low-Y diet combinations and fill each cell with research studies claiming that said diet is good for you.

> The problem is that the culture of mathematics and the culture of mathematics education--elementary through lower-level college courses--are completely different ... I've had many conversations with such students [...] who by their third year decided they didn't really enjoy math. The story often goes like this: a student who was good at math in high school (perhaps because of its rigid structure) reaches the point of a math major at which they must read and write proofs in earnest. It requires an earnest, open-ended exploration they don't enjoy.

I found this interesting because I too discovered this difference in approach but had the complete opposite reaction. I absolutely hated math in middle and high school. It wasn't until I took a discrete math course for my CS program that I got exposed to dealing with real proofs, which I found required a level of creative thinking, and I totally loved it. This admittedly wasn't an "advanced" university math class, but the difference from high school math was still quite stark.

Exactly

Part of the problem is that capitalism seems to require perpetual growth. The "economy" is only "good" when things are growing and expanding, which means more people, more consumption. We need a way to maintain equilibrium.

The concept of Steady-state Economy is rather interesting to me, though it seems the topic doesn't get much attention.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady-state_economy#Capitalis...

You clearly misread what I wrote. I was referring to the “no-knead” method which was popularized starting in the late 90s to mid-00s, and built upon by Robertson. No one is claiming kneading is new; it’s ancient.

We can debate over what constitutes “significant” innovation. I’m not saying anyone is going to come out and be like “hey turns out you don’t need flour OR water either!”. Clearly the foundation of bread is super simple and those basic principles are still unchanged. But I don’t agree with the author’s implication that it’s total hubris to be attempting to innovate and move the art forward.

Only very recently in history have we had certain technology available to us that has allowed people to exert super precise control over the baking environment (ambient temperatures, steam, etc.) and ingredients (flour blends, grinds, breeds of grain, strains of yeast). Bakers have and continue to tinker endlessly with these variables and the result is that the bread keeps getting better. Sure, not everyone cares about these things. For most people bread is bread. But it’s pretty cool (as a bread nerd anyway) to see someone like Chad Robertson put in many years of tinkering and experimentation and come up with a unique recipe that really influenced a whole new generation of bakers. Perhaps no single part of his technique or the resulting bread is 100% new or original, but he managed to compose several characteristics together in a way that was new and exciting.

Yeah seriously. Seems to really be scraping the bottom of the barrel for ways to make fun of tech workers

I feel conflicted about this piece. On the one hand I'm excited to see someone do an in-depth analysis of the phenomenon of engineer-types gravitating toward sourdough baking (which is something I've been noticing for a few years now since I myself picked it up).

On the other hand, there seems to be a lot of unnecessary negativity and shaming going on here toward the male engineer-types (the author uses the term "tech bro" at least a dozen times -- really?) who are getting into sourdough, implying that we are somehow ruining a pure and ancient craft for the sake of fashion and "disruption".

I get it to some extent. The pseudo-celebrity status of Chad Robertson of Tartine, the ubiquity of Instagram shots that emphasize only the visual aesthetic of breads, etc... those things definitely do tend to convey shallowness and egotism.

I just don't think we should be stereotyping and shaming people for picking up a hobby that brings them joy and yields direct benefits to others with little-to-no downsides. Anything that helps techies (or anyone really) un-plug and reconnect with their physical environment is a huge net-positive for society IMO. Plus, when people you know make good bread, you get to eat good bread. It's a win-win people!

I also don't think it's fair to scoff at the recent trend in the scientific approach to bread as a futile endeavor:

> Bread has been around for 6,000 years and the process of making bread has fundamentally not changed ... I think it’s funny that people would think they’d disrupt something that has this 6,000-year history to it. It’s not that easy to step into the river and change its course

The fact of the matter though is that some of these folks are actually making significant innovations in bread-making. The bread that results from these new methods is really, really, really good in ways that their predecessors simply were not. Just because something has been around for that long doesn't mean there aren't many new discoveries to be had. Hell, it wasn't until a couple decades ago that people picked up on the fact that you don't have to knead the dough to make great bread. Sometimes little things like this go undiscovered because no one bothered to look.

My final critique is that I think the author is blowing this a bit out of proportion. There is definitely a growing interest in sourdough from many types of people all over the world. Yes, an unusual proportion of them seem to be men working in tech. But this is not some panic-inducing mass-epidemic of "tech-bros" suddenly swarming every supermarket by the thousands for artisan flour and baking tools. Three years in, I'm still the only person I know who makes bread on a regular basis. People are getting more interested and trying it out, but it's still pretty rare for someone to commit to it at the same level as myself or the author's partner.

These days it's fashionable to blame "tech bros" for a wide variety of societal issues, sometimes justifiably so, but I think going after them for thinking bread is cool is a hell of a stretch.

> It's that I have a desire to eat dramatically fewer calories on a low-carb diet

Precisely my experience as well. While it’s true that really no one type of nutrient is universally bad or evil and technically weight loss comes down to calories in/out, there is a huge difference in how satisfied you feel after eating X amount of calories in various forms. I can eat an entire loaf of good bread or a big bag of chips without even thinking about it. Fats are tasty too but I don’t find myself wanting to gorge on them to the same extent.

I wasn’t trying to imply they weren’t, but I see how the wording of my comment could make it seem that way. I was commenting on the perception of “whole grain” based on supermarket brands marketed as such. Traditional baguettes are by far better than anything made in a factory.

Are there mechanical slicers out there that are affordable for home use? Last I looked the cheapest I could find was like $1,500 USD.

Soaking/extended autolyse is definitely helpful. And just using a lot more water overall.

Also if you have a coarse-ground flour you can also sift out the bran, soak it separately and fold it into the dough later, which allows the gluten to develop a bit without getting cut by the bran. That’s kind of a pain though so I don’t usually do it.

What do you use for a grinder? I’ve been itching to get into milling my own flour for a while. I hear it takes the bread to a whole new level.

Or make your own :) It's time-consuming but quite therapeutic

I'm not really making a case here one way or another about what people should eat, just trying to explain the gap observed between what people think they are buying and what they are actually getting. I don't think we should call things "100% whole wheat" when it is far from that. We're just deluding people at that point. If people prefer factory "bread" that's fine but they should at least know what it actually is.

> By the way, have you made bread with just wheat flour?

Yes, regularly. It is more difficult to obtain a good rise and pleasant texture but it is 100% doable with proper techniques. It takes a lot of time and effort. To each his own though.

> “The public we were serving, in a broad sense, said, ‘We’re organic, we’re healthy, we’re vegan, we’re whole-grain,’ and then we’d roll out these whole-grain breads. … Everyone would say, ‘Woohoo!’ and then they’d show up and say, ‘I’ll take the baguette. I’ll take the ciabatta.’”

I think part of the problem is that after 100+ years of increasingly industrialized bread, most people today have rarely if ever encountered "real" bread (including bread that is actually 100% whole-grain). I can't find a citation at the moment, but I've heard from multiple sources that in the US, commercial bread only needs to contain 51% whole wheat to be able to be marketed as "whole wheat". So in reality when you see "100% Whole Wheat" on the shelf, most times it's really more like a blend of white and whole wheat (plus a whole bunch of other preservatives and other junk). If you actually bake a loaf at home with only whole-wheat flour you will get something that is much darker and denser.

There has been a similar phenomenon with "rye" bread in the US. Most bread labeled "rye" that you see on store shelves here is a variant of a deli-style bread originating in NYC. It is mostly white wheat flour with a little bit of rye flour and caraway seed added. The flavor people associate with "rye" bread is really just the flavor of caraway seed. In contrast, true whole-grain rye bread is a very dense old-world style bread that you almost never see anymore except for maybe in very niche artisan bakeries. Example: https://i.redd.it/bhwihp6j7dr01.jpg

There's also different kinds of boring/tedious though. I'd argue it's much easier to learn to enjoy washing your dishes at home than it is to enjoy slogging through trying to grok horrible legacy code. Maybe that's just me though.

Check and check. Coffee definitely help me with grinding through boring mental tasks.

Totally. When you're new to the profession it's like you have this huge shiny new hammer and everything looks like a nail, so you want to build new custom software to solve every problem, because it's fun.

But I feel like after working on enough legacy systems you come to appreciate how crippling technical debt and over-complexity can become to an organization. What was an exciting and fun project for the creators is now the daily hell for a whole department of people.

The downside is I feel like the maturation of software as a whole is at a point now where it's diminished my ability and desire to pursue entrepreneurial ideas. There's so many powerful existing systems that can be glued together that the hassle of making something from scratch rarely seems worth it when you can get something "good enough" without custom code. On the one hand that's great for business efficiency and non-tech companies but kind of shitty for us developers who love to build stuff from scratch.

> 4. Smart people get bored easily. Being smart is not exactly the same as being curious, but if you have both these qualities you might find yourself becoming easily bored with executing the same behaviors over and over. Some types of success stem from creativity, but other types come from becoming an expert in a niche and performing a set of behaviors repeatedly. If you’re smart, curious, and have a love of learning, you might find you quickly lose interest in anything once you’ve figured it out. The execution side of performance might bore you, and you’d rather constantly be learning new things. This can end up being less lucrative than finding a niche and repeating the same formula, but that might seem too boring or unchallenging to you.

I've been wrestling with this for most of my career so far. I think it's all about striking the right balance. If you're not constantly learning you will stagnate. At the same time, jumping continuously from learning one new thing to another (esp. if the things are not very inter-related) can spread yourself too thin: you need to "go deep" on some things to become an effective/valuable contributor.

I sometimes feel resentful of the amount of time I've spent as a software engineer dealing with what I often feel is boring or pure B.S. (e.g. almost everything other than designing/building some novel complex system from scratch). But in reality looking back I see that a lot of that sh*t-shoveling has actually made me much better and wiser at my profession, despite how mind-numbing and boring it often was. So I'm trying to keep that perspective to get me through those really dull days when I want to just rage-quit and move to a rural commune :)

Exactly. Surely we can figure out ways to incapacitate without killing. There are already options (eg tasers). If for some reason the existing tech isn't effective enough, well then too bad, that's what you get until we invent something better. Take all that govt money pouring into militarization of police and instead use it to innovate in non-lethal methods.

> A man who came outside to face police, however, had done nothing wrong and did not know about the swatting call. As he stepped onto the porch, police told him to put up his hands. When he unexpectedly dropped his hands, he was shot and killed.

The number of times I've read an account of this kind of scenario playing out in the past few years is absolutely mind-boggling and depressing. The fact that in the US you can so easily be shot to bits by police just by accidentally making a small incorrect movement is just insane to me. I understand that police face real threats and need to take precautions to protect their own lives, but surely there must a better system to accomplish this other than requiring someone to immediately perform a sequence of body movements without making a single mistake or else you kill them.

> It's difficult to make your own ketogenic meals solely via your own grocery shopping

You might need to just spend a little time researching recipes . I have 3-4 that I cycle through. Also, there's always just straight up meat + veggies to fall back on, for which there are many possible combinations and that's probably the easiest thing to make. Most nights I just bake some chicken or salmon and sautee some veggies. No hard thinking involved there. And I'll have leftovers for the next night.

For me the grocery store is by far the easiest way for me to get stuff I can eat. Restaurants / takeout / convenience stores are a minefield of hidden carbs and sugar.

> He was right, of course. What these athletes do was rather interesting, but the people themselves were only fast swimmers, who did the particular things one does to swim fast. It is all very mundane. When my friend said that they weren't exciting, my best answer could only be, simply put: That's the point.

This article (and its conclusions) reminded me a lot of the stuff David Foster Wallace wrote about the world of professional tennis. Wallace portrayed the life of a professional athlete as a kind of modern monasticism. From his Esquire article "The String Theory" (2008):

> Note the way "up close and personal" profiles of professional athletes strain so hard to find evidence of a rounded human life–outside interests and activities, values beyond the sport. We ignore what's obvious, that most of this straining is farce. It's farce because the realities of top-level athletics today require an early and total commitment to one area of excellence. An ascetic focus. A subsumption of almost all other features of human life to one chosen talent and pursuit [...]

> Sex and substance issues notwithstanding, professional athletes are our culture's holy men: They give themselves over to a pursuit, endure great privation and pain to actualize themselves at it, and enjoy a relationship to 'excellence' and 'perfection' that we admire and reward (the monk's begging bowl, the RBI guru's eight-figure contract) and like to watch, even though we have no inclination to walk that road ourselves. In other words, they do it for us, sacrifice themselves for our redemption.

Point being, the life of a professional athlete in the making is (mostly) not glamorous or exciting, but rather a very narrow existence comprised of pure persistence and dedication to a small set of very specific movements and activities, repeated over and over.

Originally cable didn’t have ads: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...

Ah, I see. Thanks

It's not a joke: https://leetcode.com/problems/cracking-the-safe/

It has been asked in real interviews

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Seems very similar to this problem: https://leetcode.com/problems/cracking-the-safe/

And can confirm that at least one FAANG company has asked this in a real interview.