jamesmus

I think that's a really good point. When I see 'customize your feed' on sites that report the news, what I actually read is 'don't show me stuff that might challenge my preconceptions'. That's exactly what I don't want.

I love that 'Pirate Puns' is listed under the 'Jobs' section. I never see 'Pirate' in the options when applying for a mortgage or car insurance but I think that perhaps it should be.

Thanks for the advice. Taking a 'burner' device (as you suggest) seems to be the way to go if you are worried about being forced to divulge the information on it (or confiscation). What worries me more is the possibility of being charged with some kind of offence just for 'importing' the technology. Seems unlikely I know and I wouldn't have even thought of it myself but there are several of us going and one of the party brought it up.

I started out about 25 years ago and I suppose all I can do is to reiterate that nobody has ever asked if I have a degree. I don't really have a good handle on what the IT job market is like for people who are less experienced, TBH, so whether that information is actually useful or not I don't know. I still think it's worth applying anyway. I have worked in places where job ads have gone out for the same role I was already doing and after reading those ads I would have come to the conclusion that I was not qualified to apply. Basically my take is that people love to load those ads up so that they look impressive. When I interview what I want to know about a candidate is: are they smart and can they get stuff done? Anything else is secondary, really.

Location is probably a factor too. I am based near London and there are a lot of dev jobs around here. If you are regional then that may not be the case.

Agreed - I guess that was what I was kind of trying to say in my comment.

How much experience do you have? I have always assumed that when a job ad lists a CS degree as a requirement that there's an implicit 'or equivalent experience' clause that applies. I don't have a degree of any kind and I don't think I have ever been asked. Maybe it's different over here (in the UK), though.

I was trying to work out why on earth you would need to wear a metal conductor whilst erecting a fence and then I realized that you mean the sport of fencing. Ha, ha.

And kevlar jeans are very common for motorcyclists nowadays (I have a pair and they are pretty comfortable).

There are countries (such as the UK) where it's not so easy to get hold of firearms. Having said that, though, I am not sure how easy it is to get hold of a Taser here either.

Definitely. "Is it good enough for the business?". If yes, then leave it alone. Try to add new features in a safe way with automated tests.

I once worked a contract where it was expressly forbidden by the dev manager to refactor any code unless it was demonstrably necessary to support a new feature. Not much fun for devs at times but I respect the reasons behind the decision (esp. as it was a derivatives trading platfom and it can get pretty expensive pretty quickly when they go wrong).

If someone ask me to review a commit that contained +/- 100k loc, I think I'd reject it on principle.