7 karma · joined May 3, 2022
This has potential and I hope you keep working on it. I would consider paying for it down the road if it's more mature. Also hit the free limits very quickly.
This is great for the company. But for the candidate, I'm not convinced.
If I'm a W2 employee, I don't have any interest in complicating my tax return for a couple of days trial contract. Realistically, how much more are you going to learn about me in that time frame over a 1-2 hour technical interview.
Some plan on a longer trial contract - I see alot of 3-6 month contract-to-hire situations. This still isn't good enough because in startups the candidate will miss out on stock vesting. In large companies the candidate will be 'other'... there is a clear divide between FTE's and contractors at most large corps/there is a risk that the project might change/role availability will change.
If a company is serious about hiring employees. I'm convinced w2 from the start is the best.
It sends the message - we trust you, you belong, you're a part of our team. There can definitely be a probationary period, and there should be a more stringent hiring process. To me this is about signaling. If a company isn't willing to hire full time I think one of the following: 1. You don't have enough funding to do this right. 2. You don't know how to properly interview people. or 3. You think this is being generous but in reality don't fully understand the implications.
Remote work is about trust. If you don't trust someone - you don't have any business hiring them. Even in the current covid situation I'm seeing people hesitant to hire remotely. It's crazy. It's so much easier to slack off in an office than in a properly setup remote team.
Contractors are great for remote as well. But set clear expectations - straddling between contractor and employee is counter productive.
i.e. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/9/868/4080176
Check out permaculture, it's entirely possible.
Maybe I’m not their target customer, but I feel like meal prep services are the opposite of convenient.
1. Instead of prepping food, with Blue Apron, I now have to unwrap and prep food. 2. I now have to cook more often because of no more leftovers. 3. Instead of food waste I know have plastic and packaging waste. Food waste I could at least throw in city compost and not feel too bad about.
https://medium.com/javascript-scene/the-typescript-tax-132ff...
East coasters believe themselves to be more realistic and pragmatic than west coasters, I often hear things like "oh yeah that's just a pipe dream that's not how real business is done", or "They're not thinking it through, I have x years of experience, and can tell you it can't be done". The worst part is that it has morphed into a bit of a superiority complex that dismisses innovation. There's just a lack of interest in trying to improve/change procedures because people feel so caught up in putting out fires and being busy in an attempt to look productive. It's absurd. And extends all the way to benign things like dress code. People are afraid to wear jeans at work because it might look "unprofessional" or like they're not working as hard as people who wear 'business' attire.
Yes I said dress code... I just left a job because of this exact old school east coast culture. The tipping point for me was that I received an email that was titled "Jeans in Jeopardy". Unless 90% of people or something donated to the cause we were going to loose our month of permission to wear jeans. I found that email patronizing and down right insulting and decided right then and there that I was leaving. If you trust me to write software that is handling business critical procedures... why don't you trust me to dress appropriately in the office? You can have you're dress code, I'm going to spend my time thinking about software instead of dry cleaning my shirt and pants every day.
Yes it's the largest most immediate threat. But we will continue to have the dust bowl, ozone crisis, emissions crisis, microplastic crisis, etc. Unless we fundamentally address our relationship to this planet.
There's an incredible documentary that was way before it's time called "Who's Counting?" by Marilyn Waring. I think it addresses some of the fundamental causes of each crisis that comes up every so often. We're not accounting for the economic value or the "jobs of nature". We might not even be able to, because we really don't fully understand it.
Highly-processed organic matter is not food.
- Alan K
I don't hate on object oriented programming, but when I come across videos like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY&feature=youtu.be... it is good enough reason for me to question OOP and explore alternatives.
I will say though... in my limited sample size of coworkers, it is more fun to work with people who attack OOP than those who defend it. But the best people to work with are those who don't get emotional about programming ideologies.
This is completely false, please stop. We're omnivores:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/12/23/how-humans-evo...
McArdle, John. "Humans are Omnivores". Vegetarian Resource Group. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
Robert E. C. Wildman; Denis M. Medeiros (2000). Advanced Human Nutrition. CRC Press. p. 37. ISBN 978-0849385667. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
Robert Mari Womack (2010). The Anthropology of Health and Healing. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 243. ISBN 978-0759110441. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
2.) Yes! Precisely. If you're paying people to dig a hole, then some one else to fill it, why not skip the meaningless labor and just give people the money? It wastes less energy/labor. Obviously we need some people to do important jobs for society, but this is a driving principle behind a universal basic income. It's not about entitlements or free money, it's about what's most efficient for our country. While I'm undecided whether I'd vote for him in the primaries, Andrew Yang is actually doing a great job of educating people on this, I suggest you take a look at his website if this is new to you: https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-freedom-dividend-faq/. A really good alternative to this would be reducing the hours in the work week.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons [1] https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollecti...
This.
These articles are not calling for full vegetarianism/veganism. This is really quite doable. You really don't need meat with every single meal.
Instead of eating meat with every meal, I try to limit chicken/salmon to once or twice a day, and red meat to once or twice a week. I feel better too. I don't recommend eating those nasty vegan patties... they are so processed. If you're able to grow a victory garden [0] and/or focus on eating more fresh fruits and vegetables - it's better for the environment and your health.
Battery tech has more room for improvement than the hard chemical/physical limits of oil.
2) Job creation is a farce. We don't more oil riggers any more than we need more lamplighters and switchboard operators. If you want to ensure everyone has a good quality of life - a basic income looks more promising.[2]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery
[1]: https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/ArthurGolnik.shtml
[2]: https://tcf.org/content/commentary/universal-basic-income-ve...
He had started a company that was profitable for a time, but things eventually slowed down.While it may not have been a huge financial success, he was able to provide jobs for a good number of people for a couple of years.
Before shutting down the company, he did everything in his power to make sure every employee he had landed on their feet. Including using his network to help one of his employees get a job at a competitor.
I respect the heck out of him for doing that. There's this misguided notion in the American working world that you have to be loyal to companies... I think instead you should be loyal to people. Whenever he calls, I always help however I can.
One econ professor I had was even able to do this for a general econ 101 type class by prefacing the material with something along the lines of "I know this stuff is boring and in many cases wrong, but you have to learn it to critique it - if you're sitting here questioning this stuff take my ___ course" This empathy for us, the students, went a long way.
This is all based on the assumption that they are actually compostable and it doesn't get greenwashed like "organic"
A great example of transforming large tracts of land is the UVM Jericho research forest in Vermont. It was farmed for nearly 150 years, its soil degraded to the point where it was sandy and barren. I've heard it described as a moonscape. After planting 70,000 trees [1] and letting nature do its thing, it now resembles an old growth forest. It's a prime example of nature's capacity to heal itself and is a source of hope for me in the context of climate change.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microclimate
1: https://www.uvm.edu/rsenr/jericho_research_forest_and_conser...
I rented in a larger city last year. Had I bought instead of renting I would have had transaction costs that would be 3x the amount I paid in rent. Not only that, if something broke in the apartment I had someone I could call to take care of it. I didn't even have to think through the logistics of getting contractors to my apt and getting bids on jobs.
Not all landlords are slumlords.
It seems to me it would be easier to get people to vote than to boycott Amazon in an impactful way. But as brundolf pointed out, it doesn't have to be either/or.
Valid point.
I do question how much something like this could realistically push the market though. Boycotting a public transportation system with only one revenue stream is very different from boycotting a multinational corp with diversified revenue streams.
It is not the duty of consumers to provide a social safety net for workers. This is precisely where government should step in. If you really give a shit about the people working at Amazon, write to your congressman/congresswoman and voice your support for social programs that would positively impact them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/opinion/against-sustainab...
Imagine a world with DRM on Toasters. Doctorow will not just describe such a world, but also will get down to the tiny details. For instance describing at length the corny graphics on a jailbreak package for that toaster.
Few sci-fi writers are as culturally literate in tech and can simultaneously capture the absurdity of it all as well as Doctorow. If you want a good read and a good laugh, check out his books of short stories.
Historically, this hasn't gone well. I'm sure many Software Engineers here can attest personal anecdotes to that.
> peak hn
I believe that are saying that this this is the epitome of what HN has become. ( what they believe to be non-software engineers discussing things. )
While I don't encourage gatekeeping, I think anyone can become a software engineer if they read the right books and spend enough time. I had a similar sentiment about seeing the line:
>> fairly robust applications with very limited CS training
This is an oxymoron. Non-technical people simply cannot build 'fairly robust applications' for reasons they quite simply don't understand. Building robust applications is way more than making it work. You also have to make it maintainable and scalable. Salesforce code I've seen written by people with 'very limited CS training' is neither of these.