2,316 karma · joined October 29, 2018
By all means fine the bejeesus out of Intuit - but do not think for one moment the actual problem wasn't that they managed to lobby their way into that position.
If anybody is interested, I quite like the UK government website - https://www.gov.uk/
It has the appearance that it was knocked up in notepad, but after using it, I have a modicum of respect for how it makes government usable.
Writing an epic and a dozen US is definitely a lot quicker for one person to do, than it is for a team to implement it. So from that side, PM does a lot less work. Plus there's dev work like platform architecture, upgrading, platform, change management, automated test-cases etc, that I don't even have to think about. There's a massive multiplier there. Maybe 1 day a week writing requirements can keep a team busy and another day for answering questions, sprint ceremonies etc (story review, signing off demos) - but I'd say less than half my time is dealing with the actual productive work.
Dev team just functions on 2-week sprints and the commitments they've given - so hard for it to go too-sideways, and they're safely insulated.
Majority of my time goes on the "meta-work" - trying to manage what goes into those sprints. Customer requirements/placation - they don't (and shouldn't) have to give a toss about our internal sprints - so somebody has to ensure they'll be happy/not-going-to-sue in 18 months. Also the budget side is a complete Pain-in-the-arse. Your Agile trainer imagines there's some single pot of money to splash about however you choose to spend most efficiently. Reality is you're fighting for little top-down piles on internal accounts and then trying to fit the work you've done to them.
It's a pretty big milestone on the journey.
Non-renewables are going to be around for a very long time, as the sun and wind can't be turned up based on demand - but kind-of nice to see them relegated to surge duty, rather than the core of energy production.
Aside from a few weeks training on an unrelated Masters I'm IT-unqualified, but got a job with an IT company making software for an industry. I started out coding, but knew I was never going to be great at it - although it can be really satisfying to make something 'elegant' that's yours.
Then moved into a more customer-facing role, trying to capture what they wanted the software to do. Learnt elegance was maybe of less importance, than solving real world problems.
Then moved into Product Management, which was maybe the first time I felt a 'good fit'. Gave me the opportunity to come up with 'big vague ideas/themes', and defer the implementation to the architects and devs who were actually good at the job. You try to break it down into consumable chunks - but it's on you to make it all come together.
Final thought is just that even outside of dev, I now realize there's a massive spectrum of people within it. Some want you to absolutely nail-down the down criteria and will deliver against it. Others want to understand why, and if you can explain it relatively succinctly, will come back with suggestions on how stuff can be improved.
I guess my point is that excellent coders are required - but the "rockstar coder trope" overlooks the vast majority of people working in IT. e.g. If you've say spent a decade serving food in or running a restaurant, you've got a way better understanding of what the requirements of a POS system are, than the people creating it. If you want to move to IT, you need to learn the vocab and grammar, but you don't have to be fluent - bring in your experience. IT can only solve an understood problem, and being able to articulate that is a prerequisite to a solution.
There's the big social media silo and the Oculus and Whatsapp acquisitions - but nothing I look at and think "it would be cool to work on that". Just feels similar to some of the old guard like ebay - a dominant company that makes and I'm sure can pay well, but nothing I'd cut off my left arm to work on.
1) Product has to exist - and now it does tick 2) Has to be useful tick 3) Has to have possibility of being make cheaper by mass production no idea 4) Has to be put into mass production depends on 3
So we're currently stuck on 3.
Not sure there's much demand for a colour e-ink tablet - but maybe could be layered with a transparent OLED. I'd cough up an extra £100 for that. Normal tablet - with reading mode. Spend a while looking at static image, OLED turns off, e-ink layer fires up. Scroll down and the OLED takes over.
I mean if you can repair a phone yourself, you've got the skills to assemble a new one. What China has and what I guess India really needs, is the massive technical and logistics pyramid that the final assembly sits on.
Assembly is simply tariff avoidance - and maybe a nice puff-piece for politicians.
Few (hopefully helpful) bits of feedback:
1) Would be nicer if it wasn't just an endless list of question cards. Maybe have new ones sliding in on the right, with answered ones going off to the left.
2) Visually separate the question, your answer, the correct/incorrect answer and the explanation.
3) Scores! How many right, how many in a right in a row, how did your guess compare with others etc
4) Social Interaction. Let me share my "best run in 60 seconds" and then let others see if they can beat me.
5) Pictures? Was just thinking you could have a 2x2 grid, with number and labelled picture of object in a colum, then you click on whether you think column 1 or 2 is the heaviest.
6) Stats - maybe on landing page or as commentary on your selections "Did you know the weight of the Blue-whale has the most over-estimated mass"
7) Difficulty curve (or setting), feels a bit odd after you'd put some estimate into guestimating to just be asked "does a gorilla weigh more than 5 tins of beans?" Or maybe it just currently feels too-random. I might get 20 in a row, but I can't compare myself to somebody else who got another 20 in a row right.
8) "Is greater than" is nice, but simple <,> choice makes it too simple some times. Maybe, "Which is closest to?" - which would give you multiple options to choose from.
It would be like a soccer fan watching The World Cup, but instead of a watching soccer actually being played, they just flash up an unattributed final score, and then the winner is invited to make a speech about how they and their team played.
Ceremony isn't about TV, films or music - its just a chance to watch the celebrities.
This can be enhanced greatly my a host (I'm thinking Ricky Gervais at golden globes) just skewering both the organizers, presenters and recipients - but that's just a "baited roast"
(I know pretty much every case of my browser not working, has been due to the mottley collection of plugins I appear to have accumulated)
Given that's not gone to plan, the 'erm we had a lot of yellow material' strikes me as what you might say when you have to say something, anything else.
But then there's also a great big russian flag worked into the suit.
But then there's the 'why didn't they say it was college colours?"
Who knows?
Credit cards, paypal and all the rest existed before bitcoin. I mean it's nifty that I can do it without a single intermediary authority, but it's not that special.
I think the lack of revocation available to bitcoin is a (and I had myself for saying this) 'a feature'. If somebody sends me payment in bitcoin, I definitely know it can't be charged-back for example. It's like sending cash in the mail. Now that comes with the flip side, that they are putting all their trust in me.
Come up with your own set of rules that come within google's, peer review each other to ensure that you meet your own rules - then if google pulls one of you, the rest of you walk.
Don't have to shift how google works, just present to google as a large enough mass of money that you get promoted to a service rep, rather than templated rules and emails.
There's also a benefit on the google side - that if you're a self-moderating group, what gets escalated to them is likely to be a valid issue.
I don't for one moment thing interacting with my phone will give me another language, but doing wonders for my confidence. Can just throw yourself into it at great velocity, and if you fuck up, it doesn't judge and just throws up those same hurdles until you clear them.
Time has also cleared another hurdle - I've now got loads of access to French in a format I want. I can watch netflix in english with french subs, and then switch to french with english subs. Previous time I tried this, was watching La Haine on VHS from my local library. A great film - but didn't overlap too much with the french I was taught at school (Somewhere out there, I like to imagine there's the friendlier "Le n'aime pas" version)
What I would be interested in, is the best place for the next step - being forced to talk to a real French speaker.
Maybe my favourite bit of Duolingo, is the mini-forum attached to each question. It's a little bit hidden (as maybe doesn't align to their smooth-app-experience), but found it invaluable when I'd screwed up to be told why. So many times I've clicked full of rage at being told I was wrong, and not only learnt why I was wrong, but got a proper explanation that's stuck with me.
Maybe that's my main Duolingo quibble, the never-ending-pop-quiz is great, but it maybe over-simplifies. I'd like a tables showing all declensions, or a paragraph covering why nobody uses Vous any more.
Gene expression is what your body happens to be making (and how much) from the cookbook - and's entirely normal.
I'd have reserved "Genetic changes" for alterations to the cookbook.
As a non-American, the US does still seem to be a 'very patriotic country' - national anthems played for any reason, standing for flags, pledging allegiance to abstract concepts, USA*n chants to fellow americans etc etc.
Not in itself wrong - but always struck me as a bit try-hard on the homogeneity. Darker edge is that it means you (not you specifically, but <i>you</i>) still label people as being "unamerican".
Even in political discourse - there seems to be an abstract "America" (that everybody loves) and then criticism from both sides is couched in terms of how the other side is trying to destroy this great abstract.
I was just thinking of Eileen Gu and the whole balagan when she chose to compete for China. She's a skier. I can't think of any other country that would get so upset that a national would choose to perform sports for another country.
"I was rushing to an interview still drunk from the night before. I hit a cyclist, but just turned on my wipers and got there in time. After waiting 30 mins they told me my interviewer had been involved in a tragic accident, but as I was here would I like their CEO job?" #KeepClimbing #PressureWashYourFender
A bit like Facebook - except you don't actually like any of them.
I think the important thing is that there is 'no mouse for everyone' - we have different sized mitts, all hold the mouse differently (I switch between resting and claw), like different shapes (I like a thumb-rest, some people loathe them) etc etc. Really is something you need to try out.
My Apple annoyance is slightly the 'we know best' designs that are often mentioned - but it's mainly the users when they both suffer, but refuse to switch until Apple sells them a solution. My personal niggle was the lack of rubber tips on their earphones from the ipod until the Airpod Pros.
I switched from Lastpass when they started demanding more money - and whilst not perfect, am very happy with Bitwarden. Functionality is all there, just a bit clunky in places - but you get used to it.
For decking where you're going to have to clean it yearly anyway, I wouldn't bother (no real effort to just add on some maintenance) - and probably works out cheaper even with a few replacements over decades.
Where it shines is where it's a pain to replace and a nice bit of weathering is what you're after (say the eaves on a roof) - not too expensive to run a plank around the perimeter and no ladders/scaffolding/treatment required for the rest of your life.