1,618 karma · joined September 10, 2019
(4) took credit for all the inventions his employees invented
vs say Westinghouse who let his employees put their names on the patents for their inventions.
In other words, he wasn't as prolific an inventor as claimed since he took credit for others work.
Note I agree we have the same goals to hire people that can do the work not people whose friends can do the work but I'm not convinced that the typical interview puzzles (find the longest segment of an array that contain 3 values) has anything to do with actual work skills. Maybe it would be better with more typical tasks? If the person claims to be back end engineer ask them to write a query to select all people between the ages of 30 and 35 in Nebraska? Maybe if they are front end ask them to implement a select/option UI?
I worked at a FAANG company and saw several people get let go for underperforming. I have no idea if they could have been productive doing something else but they were clearly not productive at the tasks assigned them or that they chose to do. I also saw several other people I thought were a candidate for going down the same path before I left. Whether they got moved to something they were more productive on or whether they were showing value in other ways I have no idea.
The point being the hiring system didn't reject these people. My guess is they either got lucky like me, easy questions, or they are good at answering the questions but not good in actual production.
For example one person that was let go was clearly smart and could make the code but they would refactor forever looking for perfection and end up taking 4x - 8x longer than others around them. Maybe in some place that's a plus but for our team we needed to ship and this person was not able to prioritize shipping and after several attempts they were let go.
Another had a task that they were taking a long time on. Others on the team gave them the benefit of the doubt that it was harder than it looked but when they were finally let go it turned out it was not harder than it looked and was finished rather quickly.
Another wrote bloated obfusticated code that seemed to be 6x the number of lines it needed to be. Maybe they could have been helped via code review.
Yet another was one I interviewed and they passed the "can write code test" but in the entire time I was there I don't think I saw them submit a single PR. I have no idea what was filling their time.
I don't know if that ratio of unproductive candidates is better or worse than anywhere else I've worked on average. Pretty much every place I worked before FAANG was 100 people or less and my team 30 people or less and those teams were 10 engineers or less. There were always 1 or 2 engineers in the company known for being slow or writing bad designs. Sounds about the same but I didn't measure.
I pretty much play VR only at this point. Any time I try a typical flat screen 3D game something is missing. The frustration of having a camera stick. The boringness of having to "press the action button" instead of just reaching out and touch the thing I'm supposed to interact it. And of course most of all the feeling of "presence". The Citadel on the horizon in HL2 (old reference sorry) is a pretty picture but nothing more. The volcano in Farpoint is 3 miles high with a 15 mile high plumb of smoke and I feel that as though I was there. It's like a picture of the grand canyon vs actually being at the grand canyon. They aren't comparable and I can't go back to not feeling like "being there".
This isn't a "gimmick" like 3D movies where they stick things in your face or throw stuff at you just show off the tech. It's qualitatively different.
If there was more content I was interested in I'd spent even more time in VR. Unfortunately there isn't that much AAA VR content and worse for me I can't take horror in VR, it's way to intense, so I probably won't be able to play the new VR Half Life coming out in March.
VR today is like an Apple Newton in 1993. Everyone laughed. Heck in 2007 PDAs where just for geeks. Then in 2008 Apple's PDA shipped, the iPhone, and now everyone has a PDA in their pocket to the point that's you'd be considered strange not to have one. It might be a while, it might even be another 15 years but VR will happen. It's just too compelling when it's good.
There's some incentive to use HTML as it's indexable but it doesn't seem to be affecting mobile, although maybe mobile is in large part successful because of the web? Like the fact that you can post a tweet or a facebook post or a youtube video everywhere. Not sure that HTML is required for that and if it's not then it seems at least possible HTML will die.
On the other hand Sony Japan apparently has a policy where new employees fresh out of college (vs employees with previous work experience) are made to work 2 weeks in retail at an electronic store to get a taste of what it's like for actual customers. I ask some employees if they got any thing useful out of the experience. Most said no, it was just like getting hazed.
I have a guest WiFi partly for that reason so when guest come over their apps hopefully can't hack stuff on my non-guest network. Unfortunately every new game/app/dep I install on my phone/pc/mac/tv/appletv/ps4/switch can still do that and while I might trust the app devs I don't trust the library devs, especially the analytics libs compiled into every game.
I'd also prefer the default to be VM-ish. Right now I have 275 projects in my /home/me/src folder. Every one of them has at least a build process that executes code I have mostly not reviewed. Many of them execute more code after being built. Some of them execute code when they were installed for dependencies. Maybe I'm just not used to it but I'd really like if the process for isolating all 275 of those projects was somehow easier. Or maybe I'd prefer they were all isolated by default and that we could work on ways of making them easy to do the things they really need to do and hard/discouraged to do anything that would also be a security issue.
Maybe people have suggestions. I don't want an actual VM if it means I have to install 275 copies of OSes and 275 sets of semi global dependencies (like I don't want to have to install python 3.8 200 times) but I do want all 275 of those projects not to be able to read my private keys or my photos etc or write outside designated areas
I agree I don't like the risk but is npm more risky?
Microsoft has started adding short life VMs. No idea if that's good. Both MS and Apple offer their App stores with more locked down experiences though I'm sad they conflate app security and app markets.
Basically anytime I run any software, everytime I run "make" or "npm install" or "pip install" or download a game on Steam etc I'm having to trust 1000s of strangers they aren't downloading my keys, my photos, my docs, etc...
I think you should be in control of your machine but IMO it's time to default to locked down instead of defaulting to open.
Yes, I agree it should be fixed. Most WYSIWYG editors do have issues though. Just tried Pages (apple's word processor. abc <b>def</b>. Putting the cursor before after the space before the d I would personally think is more intuitive to insert bold but it inserts plain. As it is there is no way to type bold at the front of the bolded word. You either have to type new text and bold it OR you have to insert after the d, type a new text and an extra d then delete the leading d. Yes you can press Cmd-B then type but of course if the text had more styling applied that would get cumbersome to reapply styling so you're left with the previous solution of inserting new text in the middle and deleting the leading character.
It's mobile 1st. Take a picture of the item you want to sell, add a price and it's on sale. They've done nearly everything possible to make things as seamless as possible. When a sale happens you get notified where and how to ship it. They partnered with the post office and the 50k+ convenience stores so you can ship from the stores. At both locations they auto print labels via QR codes and offer fixed box sizes. I think they do a little bit of escrow (not 100% sure the actual mechanics) but I believe the buyer pays immediately but the funds are not forwarded until the buyer approves the item. (really not sure about this part)
Certain things seem like it might only fit Japan. The convenience store partnership is huge since, at least in populous areas there is always multiple within 2-5 min walk. Even post offices are relatively many. I also don't know to what extent a more trustworthy populus helps.
They are hiring like crazy and hiring foreigners as well if you want a job in Japan. They're probably the #1 company for running dev meetups in Tokyo and those meetups feel like SV, all English, in rooms that might as well be at Google Mountain View including food and kitchens etc..
AFAIK they've had no luck replicating their success outside Japan
Please no. Japan is that way. Japan pays programmers $20k to start, no better than working fast food. Their salaries go up to $60k at the top end at most big Japanese companies and they have the attitude that anyone over 35 is too old to code. I feel the fact they hire grads with zero experience is one of the reasons. Why pay someone $$$ if they can't actually do the job yet? Conversely interns at Google make $70k-$100k yearly equivalent. The two might not be connected but I feel they are and so AFAIK the "pay for experience" is better than "pay with free training" for employees.
It also seems better for the employer. Japan still has a culture of lifetime employment so the employer invests the equivalent of a college education into the employee and gets a lifetime commitment. That would never work in the west. People would take the free education and then leave for greener pastures the first chance they got.
I love emoji and have since I started using them in 1999 (weren't added to unicode til 2010). Most of my friends and family love them, it makes their communication richer and more easily nuanced so I'm really glad they were added.