Looks great (if it is real) but for me I guess it is not about laying down but freedom to work from anywhere.
Sometimes, I work from patio while smoking a cigar. Other times, I just need to try out a new coffeeshop on other side of town.
178 karma · joined June 30, 2017
Sometimes, I work from patio while smoking a cigar. Other times, I just need to try out a new coffeeshop on other side of town.
Never again and looking for new team now :)
A lot of fun stories while baking cookies and other mundane household chores when you have pets and kids.
EDIT: I won't buy this at this price point, but definitely get it at $150.
As reader, I return to single topic blogs more often than blogs which are allover.
So for now, I am got multiple blogs, but it is harder to manage.
But on other hand, I have a theory. Indian firms write a lot more code. Their code quality distribution probably is same as any other group but since there is more code, a large percentage of overall bad code comes from India.
It is kind of like some teams in a large organization write a lot of code but they are the one with the most bugs and they get punished. Another team that rarely has bugs but they don't write as much as code as others and are rewarded for introducing least number of bugs in production.
I don't know how to measure my contributions in terms of dollars but these lists make me feel a bit down.
I think only solution is criminal charges/jail time against higher ups who prioritized profits over security.
At my company, we were driven by by high code quality. We would try our best to minimize escalations, we will never release new code on Friday or late in a day because people have lives. We really made sure no one was working late or on weekends. And we were still competitive and profitable business.
Then we get bought by a Fortune 500 company. Slowly new rules come in. Deadline driven projects. Code Quality is no longer important. People are expected to release barely working code just so that we can do a press release. People are working late and on weekends. Code is released on Friday at 5PM because who cares about employee happiness.
The result is smartest people have already left the company. This has led to more escalations and less gatekeepers to prevent bad design decisions. People are constantly leaving. I am still here but I am passively looking, so are most of the remaining people. Right now, market is good, so I might see a pay raise but I have told recruiters, I can take pay cut for a great work-life balance.
> If you accept intolerance towards intolerance then why bother caring about tolerance in the first place.
I see a lot of my engineer friends struggling with this. Being logical & binary, they think as tolerant people, they need to tolerate intolerance. A lot of their arguments are for defending intolerant people like if bakery doesn't want to serve gay customers, then so be it. Some even go as far as to say that if laundromat doesn't want Black customers, then so be it.
I always point out tolerance is more than a simple word or definition; it is a philosophy and political idea. You tolerate your annoying in-laws; you stand up against discrimination because you believe in a tolerant society.
The real world is not binary nor logical. You have to fight evil in whatever way you can. Intolerance is evil. Turning blind-eye to it or hiding behind logic is essentially accepting intolerance.
I know many programmers from FB, Google, Amazon, Apple. There is no way they are 10 or even 2x. Some of them I worked with too, so I know their work. Others are just friends, we discuss technology all the time.
> Team sports still pay to attract top performers. The best players can be a force multiplier for everyone.
You are right team sports do pay a lot of money for top talent. Unfortunately, my experience with 10x programmers, as a teammate and as a manager, has always been negative. Most of them barely produce more than average programmer on long run but demotivate entire team or department by their arrogance, talking down, complaining, rudeness.
3 average programmers who understand your code adds a lot of redundancy.
And as an interviewer, it is really hard to identify who is 10x and who is not. But very easy to tell who has enough knowledge and pleasant personality. Programming in most companies is team sports, not a marathon.
In my experience, 10x programmers are hard to manage, they complain all the time, no one wants to work with them, their ego gets bruised easily.
But you keep them around because they seem really smart until you look at overall work produced. They might produce 10x work over a weekend but over longterm, they hardly produce any more work than average programmer.
In my interview process, if anyone even slightly hints that they are smarter than average, I end interview immediately. My team is composed of average programmers who get along and have fun working together.
As for technical skills, let me tell you a story of my friend. He was an average or below average programmer in university. We all got jobs in brand name companies; he could not get even an interview. Honestly, he was really bad programmer, I don't fault companies.
He expanded his job search from big companies, to smaller companies, to finally anyone posting a gig on Craig's List. He wanted to get hired by a guy who was setting up his band's blog. He had no idea what he was doing.
Eventually, he did a few fixed price contract work for setting up blogs. Then he got a contract to build Facebook for $500. He thought he could do that in a month. As deadline approached, he asked one of his unemployed friend to help him with it, who was also a bad programmer. They still thought they can deliver it within a few weeks. Of course, they never finished and not sure if they even got paid anything for it.
But they kept on bidding projects, taking on too much work to handle. They asked their friends including me if we wanted some side work. Of course, we said no when we saw type of work and money involved.
Eventually, they started a company to look professional. They hired part-time programmers. They even started an internship program with a local university.
Now 7 years later, they have 20 people working for them. They still like to code and they know they are bad programmers. They tell me that their programmers hate it when they get involved in a project. They are supposedly still working on Facebook clone website.
Now to be honest, they did had several advantages over many people in the US. They lived with their parents, so had no living expenses. Their education was paid for by their parents, so they graduated with no debts. So their success might not be easy to copy if you have bills to pay.
Also pretty sure all these perks came with daily nagging by their parents though.
I was international student and met many at my university. It was mind boggling how almost everyone would celebrate their cultures' conquests & wars and at the same time call Western conquests evil and the worst thing.
It was also amazing how most of the Western students would agree that Western imperialism was horrible but never argue against glorification of other cultures horrible wars.
I personally want a lifestyle business but for my lifestyle. That is wake up late, enjoy the day, maybe go for a road trip or hike, work in the evenings, work till midnight or so. Or if I feel like it, take a day off.
Go on vacations but not worry about return date. Bring the laptop and if needed, work. Otherwise just enjoy the vacation.
Tons of PHP programmers and PHP is a lot more mature language now.
But recently I have picked up a new hobby that I would say is fitness for brain. It is listening to music with mindfulness. Not as a critic.
When listening music, I actively pay attention to each note and word. This usually lead me into trance sort of state. It might be ASMR, Frisson, or a meditative trance. The thing is after actively listening to music, I feel relaxed and energized. I know our community is big on meditation but I could never sit still long enough when meditating on breath. Listening to music may not be same but I feel like it gives me a lot of benefits that people claim about meditation.
Another thing is you can listen to music anywhere. I listen to music 1. in backyard while drinking beer, 2. in family room, while everyone is doing their thing, 3. in plane, of course 4. bathing in tub (without headphones though).
Lastly, the music I listen to is sort of chill like Lana Del Ray.