I think the point is (and the election may have shown) that in reality, it is the vast majority of the highly vocal, intelligent, creative, entrepreneurial people that hate Trump.
630 karma · joined May 24, 2016
Seems fishy.
Last year I spent $400 to upgrade the motherboard, got a 5th gen i7, 32GB RAM, a GTX 950, and 6 more TB of storage (2 HDD and 1 SSD). Yay Newegg and microcenter sales!
I've never had an issue with any of the hardware, my build times are miniscule (MBP chokes on some of the stuff I compile), and I could have 10+ projects open in Android Studio / Intellij, 20 tabs in chrome, a terminal emulator, docker, and Plex, and it doesn't break a sweat.
If you don't need to be mobile that often, I'd definitely go desktop.
What I've come to see, however, is that Google is not necessarily the best place for everyone to work.
1. You really need to fit the mold. While I think I could be a cultural fit, I wouldn't want to be (based on what I've seen professionally and with friends)
2. I've become more familiar with Google's method to product and feature development, and it's not something I'd want to deal with as an engineer
3. Office politics. Many of my friends are Xooglers, and they have horror stories galore. I know that not everyone has that experience, but I like to avoid environments that foster that kind of BS
4. If I would get a job on the Android team, it probably wouldn't be doing exactly what I want (which leads me to...)
5. I've found workplaces where I've thrived professionally and socially. Sure, the compensation and prestige is a little less (but you'd be surprised to find out that it's not by much), but you can't discount being comfortable where you are
Otherwise I'd rather use whatever IDE JetBrains has for it. It might not have the exact same capabilities (or maybe it does, I didn't look closely enough) but why use another tool and context if the current one is good enough.
I'm a white American male that went to a CUNY college (city university of NY), which is not so highly regarded by the big 4.
I graduated with a 4.0, summa cum laude, phi beta kappa, with distinguished honors in CS and psychology.
In 2012 a close friend of mine was a hiring manager in Google, and he passed my resume to a recruiter. When he went back to check on the status of it later, he found that the recruiter had thrown out the resume.
After some arm twisting he got me an interview. I answered everything correctly, but was told I would not be getting the job.
Since that time I've been with a few startups as an Android engineer. I love my jobs, and work my butt off. On 3 occasions I've been at Google's NYC office consulting with members of the Android team. I've made sure to make an impression on the community.
For the past 3 years I've been getting a bi-monthly email from Google and Facebook recruiters asking me to come interview. I haven't, and probably never will; I like the startup scene way to much.
I don't think the decision makers are racist or sexist. Their job is to get the best engineer for the job. Initial impressions are hard to gauge, and without validation (education, trusted references, etc...) you can end up making a big mistake (I would know, having hired quite a few duds over the years).
I understand that not all people are in a position to distinguish themselves initially. Life isn't fair. Trying to make it fair for one demographic will likely end up making things unfair for another.
There's nothing wrong with not getting your first job at a big 4. Hit the pavement running, do a kick ass job wherever you are, and you'll get noticed.
I experienced terrible burnout around a year ago that I'm still working to get over.
I had taken a pay cut to join a startup with the promise (contractually) that I receive a raise to market value + bonus after 12 months. The latter 6 of those months were spent working 16 hour days ramping up to a massive launch. There were multiple times were I was in the office for 40 hours straight. Throughout this entire period I was locked in and producing top quality code.
A few months after launch I approached my boss about the contractual raise + bonus. After blowing me off for a few weeks I had a meeting with the president and CEO where I was told that I would not be receiving either because I was not coming into the office by 10 AM. Not only that, but they told me they didn't appreciate the amount of work I put in, nor the fact that I had barely seen my family and friends in that the period because "no one asked you to do that." Mind you, our CTO had quit with 4 months to go until launch so I had taken some of his responsibilities, and I was the sole developer on Android, and one of two for the backend. All the while the feature requests kept pouring in.
Within a week I was bedridden, and I stayed that way for the next 3 months. I've been slowly recovering since then, but I'm not sure I'll ever be the same again.
I know I could've sued for the money, but it was the lack of even a basic appreciation that did me in.
Some people have told me that I have no one to blame but myself. I sort of agree with them, however, I know that if I would've gotten my raise and bonus I would've been fine.
My university allowed me to make a custom degree that did not include calculus and didn't take my discrete math grade into account. I'm not what you would call "well-versed" in anything math related. I understand the theory for a few things I've looked into but that's as far as it goes.
In all of my career (~10 years) I've never once found myself at a disadvantage because of it, and it's never held me back from doing or understanding something.
I'm sure there are some areas of the field I'll have difficulty with (low level graphics, etc..), but even then I find that with enough hard work and an alternative approach to understanding the problem I can get things done.
The fact that CS is based on mathematic principles does not make it a math degree (although that did make things challenging for me at times).
This isn't a comment about the author, as much as it's about something she said.
"Today you can take a lot of programming and Computer Sciences courses online. Everyone can be developer! There are also a lot of developer bootcamps: within 8–12 weeks you can become a developer."
This is a very dangerous line of thinking. Some people have convinced themselves that they are competent developers because they went to a bootcamp. And they might have just enough domain knowledge to convince a company with poor hiring practices that they're worth hiring.
I inherited a situation like that (this dev was hired a few weeks before me). After a few weeks it was painfully obvious that this guy was a detriment to the company because of his lack of coding ability. For reasons above my paygrade, we couldn't fire him immediately, and eventually we took all responsibilities away from him. We paid someone to come in and not do work for us.
I've interviewed dozens of developers since then. The one's coming from a bootcamp (or similar situation) have no computer science skills. They also have no problem solving skills; they're unable to break through the box that they were taught in. Most companies can't afford to hire a developer who knows one thing, and one thing only.
Now, we've had 4 year university graduates with experience in the field come in from top schools with degrees in CS. A (scarily) large percentage of them are incompetent as well, though not to the degree of the bootcampers. They're typically serviceable though.
Another is saying: This seems like a very convenient piece of good PR for Tesla (and self driving car technology)...
Yet another is saying: I hope the folks in the car are alright
Never felt the need or desire to try anything else.