satellites

If you’re not opposed to contracting through bigger staffing firms, there is still plenty out there. But full time positions do seem to have slowed down from my anecdotal perspective.

That it is any factor at all is ridiculous.

All of his sycophants tend to think he’s a genius engineer and all the ideas his company produced are his own.

Yeah, warming oceans are a huge part of it. Jellies can thrive further and further north as the oceans fail to cool off as much in the winter. So their habitat is expanding, while the habitat of other species is shrinking.

Every time I raise an issue like this with a manager, the manager makes all the right noises but nothing actually changes. Maybe I’m just not direct enough. But I’ve never had a conversation with a boss about an issue like a role mismatch and had it actually work out. Months will go by with no progress, multiple check ins with the same conversations, until I’m fed up and I leave.

Maybe I haven’t lucked out and found a manager who not only listens but is actually empowered to change things.

Thanks for posting. I happen to be putting in my notice today at my current role, and this helps validate my reasons for leaving.

I bet they’d be even happier if they were paid the same as American workers, seeing as they’re doing the same job.

If a minimum wage worker happens to enjoy what they do, that doesn’t mean that we should all settle for minimum wage. Your argument is toothless and blatantly anti-worker.

> And the Indian devs work their ass off out of fear of getting PIP’d and with their work authorization, they lose their job means they have to leave the country.

This matches what I saw at Nike. Though it was a bit less extreme, it was the same dynamic. Indian-born workers got paid half what the American-born workers did for the same SWE jobs. And Indian workers couldn’t complain or push back against unrealistic expectations because getting fired meant getting deported. It’s a captive, exploitable labor force. It’s really messed up.

Capital and the Capital-owned State work in tandem to make things like this happen. They are one and the same.

Answer: yes.

Absolute bullshit. Not that communist countries were particularly environmentalist. But the US has mastered the art of offloading negative externalities to the third world while pretending to care about the environment. On the whole, the US is probably the most disastrous nation state to ever exist in terms of environmental damage.

Office birthday parties are the perfect analogy for the hollow, “happy” facade that Meta has presented thus far.

Paying to become a co-op member is optional. Not required for listening.

The latter seems like an issue though. It would be great to be able to convert a listener account into an artist account, or to have both under one account entity.

This seems really cool. Its aim should not be to usurp Spotify (will never happen since major record labels are entrenched in Spotify now). Rather, I could see this as an alternative to Bandcamp or other similar indie music sites.

I actually like the pay-per-play model personally even though that might irk some people. I'm interested to see how the pricing shakes out for an audiophile type who consumes lots of music.

But crypto coins are so much more trustworthy and secure than traditional financial institutions... /s

I've had this argument on HN before and I'm generally against that - I don't think the ability to pass a standardized licensing test is any more of a marker of a good engineer than an interview is. If anything, it's less effective than a good interview. I've never taken a test in all my education that I felt was truly and fairly assessing my skills as a software engineer. And I went to a well-ranked CS program. Long-term projects, and the ability to talk in depth about the technical aspects of those projects, is the best marker of ability to me.

But, if a testing system were proposed that could demonstrably add value to the industry and wouldn't select for privilege, then I'd be for it. I'm just very skeptical, and I think lots of licensing programs are onerous and only exist to enrich the licensing organization without adding real value to society.

I can't imagine that you'd compare this idea with firefighting.

Firefighting: a public good, paid for with public tax dollars, so that you don't have to worry about paying out of pocket for fire defense. They just show up when you need them, it comes out of your taxes, done deal.

Skip the Interview: a private company which turns job openings into pay-to-play gambling and takes a cut. People with networks of friends and family that have disposable income (i.e. "rich kids") are disproportionately advantaged. People from poor backgrounds, whose friends and family can't afford to put up $50 to buy them a job, are disadvantaged. Networks of friends can easily game the system over the course of a few years and buy each other several good jobs. The existing systems of class and privilege are reinforced, and on and on.

The people who would be opposed to firefighters if they were proposed today are not the same people saying this is a stupid idea. People who would oppose firefighters now would be the financial hawk conservatives who think all public funding for anything is bad. The people saying this is a stupid idea fall into two camps; they either see how impractical, toxic, and easily gamed this system would be, or they recognize that it would entrench class and privilege even further and they don't want a new business to contribute to such a world.

/end rant

No, it's still feedback. It indicates an extremely negative emotional response to this idea, or even in the most cynical view, it represents the fact that there is social clout to be gained by having an extremely negative emotional response to this idea. Either way, it means that lots of people don't like it. That's feedback.

Also, it's disingenuous to say that all the responses are just performative words. Tons of people on Reddit and HN have thoroughly laid bare all the problems with this proposal. Just read through the threads.

You're saying that as if it means tech should have a large, expensive barrier to entry.

That financial barrier is a problem in those other fields too, and it does disproportionately affect people from disadvantaged backgrounds in those fields. Your argument is basically "well it's tough for the poors to become a doctor, so it would be okay if it's tough for them to become a software engineer too!"

EDIT: also, the costs incurred by becoming a doctor or nurse are debts to educational institutions and licensing boards which, ostensibly, are doing good by educating and regulating. This is a proposal for a financial barrier imposed by your employer, and paid for by your social or professional networks. It's not the same.

> Is this sustainable, though?

Easily. Few people stay at a software engineering job for more than a year or two as it is. I went almost 4 years without staying at one job for more than a year, and not a single recruiter batted an eye the whole time. Hopping jobs with a network of friends buying each other's jobs for big returns would be trivial.

> Can’t the same thing happen right now with people who have connections to headhunter/recruiting agencies?

Yes. But right now it still requires social skills, conversations, and interviews. Skills that anyone can acquire with practice. Turning it into a pay-to-play system doesn't improve anything, it just makes it easier for people with disposable income to skip the line. Or it will make people harass their professional network for money to skip the line. How is that an improved system over just getting to know some recruiters?

> Also, if the system has no abuse detection, many people who work in tech for more than a few years should be able to afford gaming a system like this — not just those from rich backgrounds. $10k is not too much money to find if you know you’re guaranteed a 2x return in 60 days.

You're proving my point. The system as described is ripe for abuse, and what kind of abuse detection mechanism would catch things like this? They didn't describe one, and I can't picture one that isn't extremely invasive. Mild nepotism is already the de facto way that a lot of companies recruit people even though they're not supposed to - add a gambling mechanic into the mix and you can guarantee people will be trying to game it left and right. There's no way they'd be able to crack down on it at scale.

That may be true for management-type positions, but at least in my experience, engineering is somewhat more merit-based. As long as you're good at interviewing you can get a job regardless of who you know. Obviously, having connections still helps, but natural career connections don't require a literal buy-in.

Also, at least Ivy League schools have financial aid programs to help gifted kids from disadvantaged backgrounds still be able to attend.

Because with a trivially large enough network of friends willing to game the system, you could just keep buying each other top-paying jobs over the course of a few years. So long as you're at least a mediocre engineer, you can make it past the two-month mark and everyone gets their ROI.

> people with the ability to afford payment have a higher chance of being hired

That's the other very valid reason that this idea sucks. People from disadvantaged communities now not only have the existing hurdles to face in entering the tech world; now trust fund kids with rich friends can continually skip the line and buy the jobs that others are applying for. And a company is going to take the pay-to-play candidate, because it's easier than running an interview process.

Sure, but who is benefiting?

It could catch on because companies and bosses like it, but it could harm workers for all kinds of reasons. Thus, workers need to loudly voice their concerns, so that companies will be discouraged from adopting it.

Picture the inverse. Would you really email an old boss from 2 years ago asking for $50 so you can buy yourself a new job?

I would not, nor would I want coworkers asking me for money. Imagine if someone asks you and for whatever reason you don't want to bet on them - how will that conversation go? How will that affect your professional relationship with that person?

This is more or less a proposal for nepotism-based gambling.

Airbnb is not a good example - it still has its own problems and controversy. But even with that said, it is nowhere near as ripe for abuse and fraud as Skip the Interview is.

Also, there's already a solution for reputation - the standard references system that already exists. This soon-to-be-former CEO is claiming that references are "useless," and then implies that someone being able to buy themselves a job by harassing their former coworkers for money is a better system. It's a ridiculous premise and would create incredibly toxic culture in professional networks.

I think people are defensive and outraged because if something like this ever caught on among tech companies and became a normalized practice, it would make the process of job seeking much more frustrating than it already is. It's basically institutionalized, monetized nepotism, with all the toxicity of an MLM scheme.

A professional world where this was a common practice would be an awful one for a lot of people. The intense reaction might be a bit of overkill, but it's worth sending a strong message that this is not okay.

Maybe it's the Silicon Valley (HBO) joke about how every startup says they're "making the world a better place," but dramatic titles like this make me automatically roll my eyes.

Reading further, it seems like this is the crypto equivalent of a 3rd party service holding money in escrow while a rental agreement is carried out? Or in other words, this is crypto-enabled-rentals without the human 3rd party between owner and renter.

I doubt that any average people are ever going to use this. It's a neat thought experiment, but it's a tall order to even get your average neighbor to understand how it works. And like most crypto spaces, I predict it will be dominated by a small amount of superusers, and will be prone to bugs and hidden exploits (lots of those in the smart contract world) which will deter even tech-savvy people from trying it.

Cool idea, but I'm not holding my breath.

That is very true. I’m just wondering how this even became an article. It’s a government statement with zero citations or elaboration.

I’m not surprised that this was written by a self-described serial entrepreneur. It has all the hallmarks of a “capitalism isn’t all that bad, it turned out great for me!” type of view.

From a philosophical standpoint I do agree with the author that difficult, deep work is spiritually enriching. But most bullshit jobs that people work for their 9-5 are not that.

I think people are not sick of work in general, but rather are sick of that bullshit work. Working for subsistence, in a way that is obviously exploitative, to enrich corporate elites who actively seek to keep conditions worse for the working class. The grift is much more out in the open now than it used to be.

The conditions of the working class in America are not ordained by God, but rather maintained by the people who are heavily invested in keeping the system the way it is. We could have much more leisure time, like most other industrialized countries. We could have socialized healthcare, like most other industrialized countries. But we don’t, and when people get fed up with it, we got a slew of blog posts like this explaining that those grievances are all bullshit and they should just shut up and enjoy their work.

Is this really just a two-sentence article? Is Reuters a news site or just a mouthpiece for the U.S. security state? I don’t understand how this is considered journalism. There are no specifics whatsoever.