itsmefaz

Ok. If he was in FAANG companies the author would be effectively around Staff or Senior engineer caliber.

Your growth is attractive! For the first 5years, you worked as a Software Engineer. Assuming a good track record, you could have been a Senior or Staff engineer within that time frame. Then, how did you transition to VP within the next 5?

I have an issue with the author calling it an 'investment' mindset. This is what consultants as part of their job. Taking their underlying assets (skills, network) and providing services to customers seeking these skillsets.

Calling it an investment mindset misses the actual point, that is most people when they talk about investment are mostly referring to things like - real estate, the stock market where they don't have to spend significant time doing that activity. One of the things I'm interested in knowing, is this something the author is doing full-time or is he does to support his other full-time activity? Some data about the revenue the author is making would be helpful.

Sorry for the delayed response. This is interesting! I was thinking similar but more than just communication. I'm currently of the mindset that at a fundamental layer, engineering is more a human nature problem - understanding humans and helping them in completing a given task.

Thanks for your response, Mike.

Maybe I'm thinking about computing as an end itself and just too insecure to acknowledge its application aspect. Because it seems to me that when the application becomes the end-goal then the engineering loses its value.

Any idea on the claim?

Thanks

I wish other companies should follow this model soon.

Got it! I'm currently at the stage of my life where I want to venture out on my own. Few questions that I have are -

a) How relevant was your experience (as engineers) in building and growing startups?

b) Looking back, what skills would you have liked to acquire before starting up?

c) How much of startups is marketing and networking compared to product and growth?

Thanks,

For some reason, I find the writing and decisions to be mature. Shouldn't the early stage product development be messy and full of doubts? I understand the post doesn't capture everything, but it feels the decisions the founders took most of the time had positive outcome. Is this luck or value of product-market fit?

you became a manager?

are you still on H1B?

Prayer, meditation are some of the other things that you can focus on.

Move from using devices to other hobbies like being with the family, kids, books, or just hanging out with friends

If you are into fitness.. all the better.

A very good point, the labor laws in India are messed up.

Though Uber requires great engineering backbone, the future doesn't seem to be bright on the engineering front.

This seems like the best decision Dara could take at the time being and if Uber is able to recover from this mess all well and good.

A good point taken below is the shift from product-oriented to operations-oriented company. I guess this transition is long-overdue and expected to make sustainable profits.

John Schulman's article provides better practical insights than the one Sam has authored himself. So, people looking for more concrete views and pieces of advice I'd suggest taking a look at the John Schulman article: http://joschu.net/blog/opinionated-guide-ml-research.html

Does overshooting work? Won't people get caught doing this..

> so had uses for it all, could test out the new ideas in graphics programs, and had questions of my own to answer

That's a very interesting point you made!

I'm also in the same boat. However, I've started reading from elementary mathematics and I enjoy it much more than what I used to.

Is this same across countries? I've always assumed that math education in U.S is better than the other countries in general?

This is a really bad idea..

Firstly, home is not an effective place of work. I come home mostly to be with my family and not take my problems from work to home.. Aren't there many studies done on the same, why work shouldn't be brought to home and stuff..

Secondly, if the employer provides all the required setup (monitors, webcams, speakers) and support for electricity backups and stuff then I might be willing. The point about electricity backup is very true especially for developing countries.

Thirdly, I'm actually working more (double time) compared to only working 8 hours. This also has to do with my time management but people are actually lazy at home and very hard to be dependent on them..

I think I'm missing something here.. but how can one negotiate severance pay for termination.

I was under the assumption that companies offered severance pay as a means to save face.. and this is not part of the offer negotiation.

I might get lot of flak for this, but everytime I see a post criticising the software engineering interview process I'm thinking what is this dude trying to sell.

The interview process is an assessment on your programming knowledge and its also an assessment on whether you'd be able to hang mentally (intellectually) around the people within the organization (read culture).

If the culture of the organization is made of people who are very proficient in computer science theory. It is imperative they'd would expect any new individual to at least be like them. That's human nature!

> CS has somehow regressed to the behavourism era of psychology or economics before the Lucas critique?

Can you please elaborate on this please?

Can you please elaborate on the feature engineering part a little bit?

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Also, we are very quick to jump the bandwagon and not analyse it objectively. The people who say the interview process is broken are themselves selling the same solution just in a different medium.

Can you please elaborate on this? Might give me a better viewpoint.

One of the reasons I see that happening is because the role itself is so vague that there are no proper boundaries and it is entirely subjective.