I've noticed the same thing. I suspect it's a combination of the legacy of COVID and the rise of digital media. As humans, sometimes we are lazy and prefer the predictable, non-messy comfort of a movie, show, news outlet, or digital social network to the hard work of real relationships with real people. Also I think that because of COVID, and the rise of remote working, we are out of practice of the skill of socialization, which can increase the frustration and resignation to not-caring and not-trying. The people I know who are the most social, also have the least amount of screen time in their lives.
I see an emerging theme of "exercise and spend time with my kids" which is funny because I currently work 32 hours a week and I spend the "extra" time on that. I don't have to work. I do because my project pursues a worthy goal and has its own fulfillment, smart coworkers. If something more worthy came along, that I could actually be good at, I suppose I'd do that instead, whether it made money or not. I'm mostly concerned that I am the problem if I become too cynical, jaded, or depressed to see an opportunity to make the world a better place and go for it. Cutting out social media and reading the book of John, looking at Jesus helps inspire me and keep me focused on what really matters.
LastPass user experience has grown terrible over the years. The iOS app regularly freezes for over ten seconds with no response.
Trying to login to LastPass on a second device, with 2FA enabled, regularly takes me over five minutes. Why?
Login to app. Lastpass tries to auth using watch app. That's broken, so ask for a SMS. Enter SMS.
That doesn't work. it wants master password again. Ok we're in! but now whatever flow to login to an app is broken. Open app, try and use the helpful keyboard shortcut that's broken. ok go back to last pass. copy the password. Oops it wants to enter master password again. Ok. Good thing I picked a long master password. Ok now back in. need to search the site I wanted. got it. copy password, switch apps, paste. DONE!
Also, security vulnerabilities?! Definitely going to switch to Bitwarden.
My wife has a PhD. She told me that universities are reluctant to hire their own PhDs because they'd rather have the cross-pollination of ideas from other institutions, in order to avoid an institutional echo-chamber.
It doesn't surprise me that they are not street legal...but it's interesting to me that in all practicality, they are probably safer than riding a bike; and yet bikes are legal.
"Finally, when the 40-hour workweek was established, two-income households were rare. Only 15.2% of married women were employed in 1940. But as of 2012, 60% of households had dual incomes.
When both members of a couple work, it leaves less time for children, chores, errands, food preparation, and everything else that must occur outside of working hours."
40 hour workweek is fine for most people, but I think HR ought to be more flexible in working hours and salary employees choose, based on their season of life. Because we are dual-income with 3 young children, I work 32 hrs instead of 40; but it's an odd arrangement I had to ask for. I see families in a simliar situation struggling, and I think it ought to be more of the norm to offer this without a company raising questions about productivity/loyalty/laziness/benefits etc.
Deliberately targeting layoffs based on class reminds me of Soviet Russia. https://www.britannica.com/event/Holodomor. Communists decided to take the land of wealthy and productive kulak farmers; it resulted in mass starvation.
Agile Software development done well is a good way to combat BS because it makes building a product into a team sport where everything is out in the open. Grooming, planning, sprints, standups, retrospectives, demos are all ceremonies which increase transparency and accountability. They also provide a way where development productivity can be measured against the collective assessment of the team.
As others have said: The solution is to buy a laser printer; if you need color, order prints online or at your local drug store/print shop. I've had a laser printer for 10 years. It doesn't give me any problems. I buy toner once every few years. It'd be great if we had some regulation to pass along the cost of generated landfill waste to companies, so they'd think twice before making a something that's destined for the landfill after only 2 years.
I grew up in the suburbs. By the time I was a teenager I couldn't help but ask: "Why is everything here new? And why are all the people white?" I took a look at "White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism" for some answers.
As a consumer, I am well aware of this problem. I use Fakespot Fake Amazon Review browser extension to help weed out junk reviews and find quality products. (It seems almost all of them are 4.5 stars these days)
Another strategy to counter bad-quality products is to buy items directly from the brand's website. i.e. buy socks from hanes.com instead of amazon.
Another problem I see with the shopping experience is that I would sometimes spend 10 or 20 minutes looking for just the right product (which is absurd when you think about just how powerful modern filtering and search algorithms can be.) And then it dawned on me. Amazon is making money off of those 10 or 20 minutes of "engagement" because it gives them time to show a bunch of paid ads as I search.
To counter that problem, I always filter my results with "Prime Only" and Filter: Show lowest price to highest. I use Prime Only as a proxy-variable to filter out unpopular items (they are probably unpopular for a reason) It's amazing how much money you can save doing this. Usually you can avoid paying double what the default results are.
I think that lurking behind the question is an assumption that freedom and openness is better. Freedom and openness is fine until you want to build a house. Then you actually have to put walls somewhere to hold the roof up...and then you build inner walls to hide the bathroom from the rest of the house. In building software, structure is inevitable. The rightly chosen structure will give benefits; poorly chosen structure will work against you. When I build a class, it serves a purpose to some other part of the system. The purpose it serves is understood by its public members and functions. Everything else is private. What happens if you don't do this is that the next person to read and use/modify this class isn't going to know what your intention was or all the details of how it works, so it helps to give them the benefit of some hints of structure.
The only time I break this rule is for data-transport type classes. For example if I serialize some object into some class X before sending it to some API. Since all those objects do is hold data, I see no point in making the members private. Many people do, I suppose out of habit; or in anticipation that maybe one day those objects will do more than hold data. I'd like to hear a good argument for making members private in data-transport type classes.
I have experience on Upwork both hiring and being hired. From hiring perspective, the person I interviewed was not the person who actually did the work. Being hired via Upwork, it was a challenge to even land an interview; I'd bid things and be in a pool among 10+ other people internationally with lower rates. I've worked in software in the US for over 10 years. The other aspect is that often those hiring on Upwork don't know what to look for, or have unrealistic expectations. I did find a few mutually successful gigs, but didn't make as much as I could have in industry. I decided that working for a normal company was more advantageous.
So is the takeaway that data in the RAM of some server connected by fast network is sometimes "closer" in retrieval time than that same data on a local SSD?
"add number two to your backlog if you work on iOS or Android"
I would...but as an iOS and Android developer, how do I know if it's a non-verified sender ID? The reason browsers can warn on these things is because of public key infrastructure, but that doesn't exist SMS phone numbers. Am I missing something?
Doesn't Apple "deliver high-quality products with very few bugs at a fast cadence, and continue to make major changes long into the future without slowing down" ? I'm not sure how they do it; but I like their products. It seems like they do it by saying no to a lot of complexity; while embracing necessary complexity.
Android and iOS app developer speaking. If you've got Android development skills, the easiest money would be to get a normal job with a normal company developing their app. If you're interested in long-term gains, invest 50% of your salary into index funds. They are are currently offered at a big discount because we're in a recession!
Most of the mobile industry is normal companies who need developers for their app, in the same way they need developers for their website. The image of the lone app developer making some passion-project app and posting it up on the store to sell for millions gained some popularity because it's so inspirational, but that's not how most app developers make money, especially in 2022. The market is over-saturated.
If you are more interested in a risky passion-project than a normal job, then the emerging market of VR gaming apps on Oculus still shows some promise.
I remember having the same problem earlier in my career. I inherited a code base that was a million lines of code and 15 years old. Things I tried: printed out the nastiest 2000 line function on a giant piece of paper, logged every function entry. Things that worked well at the time: reading filtered logs of actual code execution, tracing through code to see how it works. What I would do if I could talk to me 10 years ago: Don't worry about the big picture. Trace through the code path relevant to your task and make sure you understand whatever inputs/outputs there are on that path. If there's something that makes 0 sense, ask a senior dev. After tracing through enough paths, you'll start to develop a mental map, in the same way you develop a mental map of a geographical location, after visiting about five locations in the same area. You get to know the main roads, highways, etc. You have a knowledge of the relevant paths; you don't always need a map of the whole city.
I've worked in tech for over 10 years. I'm here to stay current with trends & ideas. I quit Facebook and major news outlets several years ago; this is the only news I read besides The Pour Over.
I currently work 32 hours per week. When I was in the the office it was a 4 day week; now that I'm remote I prefer working about 6.5 hrs per day. I negotiated this with my employer as 20% less working hours for 20% less salary. I love it. The big win for me is having ~8 hrs per week where I don't need to work AND have childcare, so if I want to sip coffee and read a book in peace & quiet, I have time to do that. Also gives time to be involved in my neighborhood, church and school, which I find satisfying.
The biggest concern my companies had with this is that co-workers would hear about it, get jealous, and ask for it too. Companies also had this concern about remote-work pre-pandemic, and I think both have found these concerns to be unfounded. Especially with my current schedule, I'm available at all the times when anybody would want to talk to me anyway, so most people don't even know about this unique arrangement.
The article casts office forced-fun birthday parties as toxic, and yet the only alternative mentioned is co-workers voluntarily gathering together to drink alcohol and complain over zoom...as if that isn't also toxic. Hello everyone, we can do better!
A better alternative is employee-led, voluntary gatherings. For example, my company will pay up to $1000 for any such gathering. Somebody organizes a gathering they want to do, and it's announced to the whole company. Anybody who wants to join can come too.
This article was funny and had a good moral wrapped in it. The part where he pays his competitor is priceless. "A tear rolled down my cheek for every single digit of my credit card that I entered in their app"