Great name
339 karma · joined November 16, 2019
If you see a police stop on the highway, should you pull over and record to observe? Could this stop make you a person of interest, or at least a known nuisance, to the average law enforcement agency? Would footage of interactions between the detained driver, police, and yourself be of interest on social media? Does the U.S. government possess a vast well of data of each citizen's interactions on communication networks?
Let's be honest here - what was this person's intentions? A quick Google search of "Xenia Pantos" shows details about this person's life and practice that would place them a political/social enemy of the current U.S. administration's voting base.
My advice is to treat all interactions with the government as neutral at best, and to avoid any reason for them to target you. If you decide to become a political, expect some negative attention from the opposing side, especially if that opposing side is in power. The ideal world where a citizen exercises their rights crumbles into brutal reality the second one of these interactions being observed becomes physically contentious or violent.
At the end of the day, we can only read so much and take on so much work before we bottleneck ourselves. Cognitive overload leads to burnout. Rumplestiltskin vibes with this AI stuff…
There are no credentials required.
>authoritatively say
Experience beats credentials.
>qualified labor pool
No degree required outside of a HR checklist. CS students are not necessarily qualified outside of academia in the real world. H-1B just means you jumped through the hoops of credentialism to be a "qualified" candidate. Many universities require you to have a CS degree to work as an tech employee, so they shut out many qualified candidates. Their loss, and eventual downfall.
>Do you think the deep engineering knowledge and practices to solve hard problems is overrated?
Yes, extremely overrated. The emergence of AI is at least proof that "deep engineering knowledge" can be easily summoned by a prompt. The practices are on their way to automation. The hard work has been done.
Why are universities not creating a talent pool for their self-sustainment? Many of us have had to suffer through college lectures of dubious real-world application and near-incomprehensible accents. I am not alone when I realized that I could just enter the tech world with self-study, self-promotion, and applying to open positions.
They say, "those who can, do - those who can't, teach", and I believe it. Maybe the real question is: Are universities going the way of the physical newspaper, the personal blog, the dinosaur...?
Be happy you’re not employed in tech course content creation or something that is directly replaceable TODAY, like language translation or low-level graphic design.
Honestly, the ideal approach if you're going for traditional W-2 steady paycheck employment job is:
- recruiters/people already approach you. This works when you build your network and reputation. - use your network of trusted/worked-with-previously recruiters for leads. - fend for yourself in the murky depths of the scummy internet full of low-life tactics reference farming, resume scraping, and G*d knows else happens when you participate in a public forum.
Real question: did you really want that job or was this just a +1 for your gamified job search? I think quality searches yield quality results.
Ride 8AM and 5PM every workday for a year and tell me that it’s safe when you roll through the bad parts of Long Island/ brooklyn/Queens or the south side of Chicago. Tell me that you don’t have to take the inconvenient early train because of nTh handicap ramp pickup or last-mile cyclist that slows down your commute. Security on transit only cares about fare collection. The US is not like Europe where there is some latent pride in your ancestors accomplishments.
Sometimes it is fun to explore something and sometimes it’s better to never start. I have a running list of ideas i will never work on until the opportunity of time and savings align.
I’m not sure if it’s common but i heard this quote from an entrepreneur: “There’s nothing worse than a mediocre business “. A bad business will die of its own, a good one sustains itself, and a mediocre one grinds you down.
The OCR has a lot of false positives, though. "Truck" definitely was not what I was looking for, but it makes up a significant amount of the search. "culo" fuzzy/exact results were also surprisingly disappointing :) .
If there's a way to change the text-matching accuracy and add this filter to the front-end, I'd be lost here forever. Switching locations would also be a fun way to scale this up. Throw an Adsense add on there and you're looking at a decent passive income!
Zappa music, otoh, reveals the genius behind it once you pay attention. Then again, half of his catalog is just self-indulgent wankery he himself admitted he funded through the juvenile songs.
Listen to “Inca Roads” or the whole “Zappa in NY” album and you’ll see Zappa’s greatness.
It was great, free beer and pizza definitely helped me when i was struggling to get my career off the ground. Janrain had a great meetup space (old Nike basketball court with risers) with awesome tech topics that exposed the vast world of tech to a noob like me. Puppet Labs, Urban Airship, and New Relic also had top-tier meetups. Intel in Hillsboro was usually worth the MAX trip out there. Tons of swag, food, and opportunities for employment.
The real issue with these meetups is that the money dried up. Most of the meetups had recruiters who were desperate to hire and sponsorship helped fund these meetups. Now that WFH is widely acceptable, there’s little incentive to court talent locally. Zoom meetups feel inorganic and lifeless, although they cost very little. There was a gold rush feel during the 2010’s, but I feel like that time is over. Cost-cutting, outsourcing, and the AI hype are leading to software becoming a less prestigious career than it once was. I don’t see this optimism coming back any time soon.
A good strategy would be to have them be a lead on a minor project that requires technical chops and communication. Ensure there is a daily standup and grind them on details and timelines. Get them some juniors as direct reports to expose their lack of knowledge, then have meetings with these junior devs about project performance.
The stress alone will probably make them quit. Document as much as you can in emails and messaging systems.