sbacic

If I could answer that question, I'd be doing management consulting, not software development.

But I think a good first step is to just be aware of it. Many people don't even notice these subtle biases. Once you're aware of them, it's a matter of training yourself to ask the question: is this good for me, or good for the business? Am I doing this because it's good for me, or good for the business?

> Convincing, nutritious, cheap artificial meat could turn the world vegetarian.

I'm not so sure about that. I've recently had the opportunity to try a vegetarian diet for a week. I did not enjoy it, I found the food tasteless and insufficiently nutritious.

But that got me thinking about all the dishes I usually consume which, while not exclusively plant based, are mostly made out of vegetables. All those dishes have a critical animal-based ingredient. The problem? Many of those ingredients aren't desirable by themselves - meat with significant bone and fat parts, pork hooves or ears, animal blood and others. Yet without them, you cannot make those dishes.

I wonder, when we finally arrive at that artificial meat future, will today's "undesirable" parts of beef or pork or chicken become an expensive delicacy? Will it basically wipe out traditional recipes that depend on them? I'm not sure I'd want to live in such a world.

Yes, but as I said, that's a slippery slope to walk on - you're not there to make friends or have fun - you're there to do work. The whole point of that arrangement is that you do something that something else values enough to pay money for, perhaps something that you don't particularly want to do or something that bores you.

If you start adjusting the workplace to fit the needs of the employee (gosh, how wrong that sentence sounds!) you end up in situations where it's suddenly justifiable to let developers use technologies unsuited for the situation because they're "fun" and "interesting" to use and keeping them happy means they're more "productive". Or letting middle management play politics because it keeps them happy and more productive. Or forcing people into open offices because some boss likes the feeling of lording over his subordinates and that makes him happy and productive.

I guess what I'm trying to say is - some basic levels of courtesy and human empathy are needed for any group endeavor to work but beyond that, decisions should be made in the interest of the business rather than what makes individuals happy.

> Except for marginal cases, it's not about how good you are at your job. You just have to be liked while being sufficiently good.

I think this is dangerous ground to thread. I don't like to work with assholes any more than the next guy and I'd certainly prefer working with people I personally like but that kind of thinking opens doors to all kinds of abuse; from favoritism (I like him, therefore he gets a pass when somebody else might not), through promotions (what does giving a promotion to somebody likeable over somebody more competent do to morale?) to plain fuckarounditis (playing career games rather than what's good for the business, wasting company resources on petty political games).

I mean, I get it - it's human nature. But something feels off when we're justifying our simian prejudices in an environment where we're supposed to prioritize somebody else's satisfaction (whoever is paying us) but instead we do what we feel is best for us personally, using a fairly emotional and error prone system of judgment (I don't care if this guy sucks, I like him because he's my friend).

SEEKING WORK | Europe | Remote ok

Front-end developer with over 4 years of freelance experience, mostly on greenfield projects but also occasionally with established codebases. Used to working alone with minimal supervision or in small teams. Have a good eye for design, a strong focus on code quality, good communication skills and some experience in technical management.

Technologies: React, GraphQL, Typescript, CSS3/HTML5, Git, styled-components, Formik, Jest, Storybook, TailwindCSS, NextJS, SASS, TailWindCSS

Blog: www.slavenbacic.dev

Github: www.github.com/sbacic

Email: bacic dot slaven at gmail.com

CV: available on request

I've never slept anywhere as well as on a boat. Even if the boat is moving, the waves are smashing against the structure and it feels like you're in a washing machine it's still the most restful sleep I've had.

I'm using Hasura for that right now to handle the API + database part. Fairly satisfied with GraphQL API generators so far - they get the ball running quickly and take over the boring CRUD parts so that I don't have to.

Framework looks interesting, even though the CPU is not as good as the M1. Pity it's only available in the US.

I agree. I've been meaning to buy an Apple laptop to develop on for years now and constantly kept putting it off; first because of quality concerns that have no place in a device with such a price tag and now because of this.

If only there was a Linux-compatible laptop with specs similar to the M1. The only thing that comes to mind are Thinkpads and those things are ugly as hell.

Competing for foreign investment is not stealing. What you're implying is that small countries should know their place, not rock the boat too much and above all else, never dare compete with bigger countries...or else. Needless to say, such a stance is antithetical to the very foundations of the European Union. The free movement of capital, labor and goods & services is a whole package - you cannot pick the parts you like and disregard the parts you don't because they're not to your advantage.

EU cohesion funds and other forms of block-wide handouts are not a substitute for functioning and competitive economies. The ability to compete on taxes is absolutely critical for these small countries to attract business and retain their human capital (which would otherwise just leave for developed western-European countries).

No we do not. Tax harmonization is being aggressively pushed by certain member states for their own benefit and to the detriment of other, less developed member states.

Here's a back of the napkin calculation I'm using:

( Yearly Salary - taxes - (monthly rent * 12) ) / months (or days or hours) worked

This lets me know how much I'm getting per unit of time once I deduct all the expenses (tax + CoL). If you commute, add that to the number of hours worked - those hours aren't paid, but they should still be accounted for.

What I've often found out after running the numbers:

1. Taxes + CoL have a very big impact, more than most people realize. If you can keep your taxes and CoL down, you can draw half the salary and still come ahead.

2. Remote work means that you can structure your affairs in such a way that you're making more money per unit of time than you might by being on-site, even if on-site pays more.

Out of curiosity, what do you do? Which tech stack? What does your employer do?

> The biggest surprise for me in the current market is how employers and companies are complaining about the lack of skilled people but are unwilling to shift their own behavior to become more desirable to workers.

I don't think it's really surprising - what makes sense for the business does not necessarily make sense for the middle management writing the hiring requirements. Bob doesn't want to deal with remote subordinates because he has no idea how to. He also doesn't want to hire outside the US because he's never done it before and doesn't want to learn.

Of course, Bob isn't going to go to _his_ supervisor and say all this - that would be career suicide. So we get all sorts of silly excuses about why they need people in the office or only hire from X country.

And all that is going to persist until people like Bob are forced to adapt or lose their jobs. The real question is this though: how much are developer salaries inflated because of stupid, self-serving requirements from people like Bob?

I'm genuinely curious - is interacting with recruiters now considered a bad move career-wise? As in, because of the scummy tactics some of them use, will it make it harder to land a job in the future due to the shady things they do with your CV/personal info?

No, I mean removed so that everybody has to pay it. I'm just hoping they won't get to pull similar shenanigans this time since this is a global agreement.

I just hope the 750 million euro limit doesn't suddenly vanish "somewhere along the line" because "countries couldn't agree" and we end up with the whole Digital VAT Directive circus all over again - that is to say, that this minimal tax starts applying to small businesses it was never meant to apply to.

> Worded cynically: bring tax avoidance to the middle class and the poor, and it'll be shut down promptly.

This already exists in certain places and under certain conditions. Several EU member states offer very generous tax rates provided you make under a certain sum and meet other (fairly specific) criteria.

SEEKING WORK | REMOTE Europe

Front-end developer with over 4 years of freelance experience, mostly on greenfield projects but also occasionally with established codebases. Used to working alone with minimal supervision or in small teams. Have a good eye for design, a strong focus on code quality, good communication skills and some experience in technical management.

Technologies: React, GraphQL, Typescript, CSS3/HTML5, Git, styled-components, Formik, Jest, Storybook, TailwindCSS, NextJS, SASS, TailWindCSS, etc...

Blog: www.slavenbacic.dev

Github: www.github.com/sbacic

Email: bacic dot slaven at gmail.com

CV: available on request

> For that matter what do regular (amateur) boaters do if their sailboat or motorized boat get caught in a bad storm on the open ocean?

I am far from an expert on this topic, but for sailboats; sea anchors and storm sails. The first is a parachute-like device that keeps the boat pointed in the right direction relative to the waves. The second is a small, tough sail used when any other sail, even while reefed, would be too big.

If you can't make it to shelter in time, it's better to weather the storm in open water than near the shore - at least that way, you won't risk hitting something and sinking.

I was referring to the bladder's capacity to store breathable air. I'm well aware how buoyant an inflated bag (or a wetsuit, for that matter) can be :)

Yep. One of the first issues you'll encounter when learning to dive is getting your body to sink (that's what all those lead weights are for). I also don't think an inflatable goatskin has enough air capacity to be relevant.

> Operating a two-sided marketplace is one hell of a moat. Nobody's displacing eBay, Amazon, or the Google Play Store anytime soon; even Craigslist seems to be getting by. Here in Argentina, MercadoLibre established an eBay clone before eBay moved in; the consequence was that eBay just bought shares instead of even trying to compete.

That's due to network effects, not because they're operating a two-sided marketplace. And then you list an example where that moat failed (Argentina - and it's not just Argentina).

I suspect that on this particular market, network effects won't have as strong of an effect and the local players have better market insight since they're far closer to the customer.

So let me get this straight - it's a bad deal for the restaurants, it's an increasingly bad deal for the deliverymen and it depends on VCs subsidizing it to even work?

How did something like this even get funded? I mean, I could understand if the development costs were being funded by VC money, but actual deliveries? Even if one company were to actually dominate the market, it would still need to continue subsidizing variable costs and there is no moat to protect them from competition.

I'm curious - why is there no open source solution to replace these apps? If not with full functionality, then at least with 80% of the features?

The day to day running of the system for each particular market could be handled by an NGO, a cooperative or something of the sort.

That doesn't really make sense to me - a market of that size ought to have niches and market segmentation. After all, no matter how generic and broad-appealing the script is, I don't think my 60+ year old mother is going to get excited about the next Marvel movie.

This! I am absolutely flabbergasted by the difference in the quality of the visual effects and acting when compared to the dialogue and storytelling.

I feel like the script is either intentionally dumbed down or that the script receives a disproportionately small part of the overall budget.

I don't think that I'm the only person that struggles with pretty much anything that doesn't bring instant gratification, be it hobbies, chores or starting a business.

Most businesses fail anyway and knowing that even if you beat the odds and succeed, the reward might not be worth it because the government takes an ever large cut should give every reasonable person pause to reevaluate their life priorities.

As cliche as it sounds, money isn't everything.

I'd like to point out that every one of the "correct" examples is longer, sometimes much longer, that the "wrong" example preceding it.

I've found that I usually start with the "correct" way and end up regressing to the "wrong" way as more and more work piles up, stress builds and deadlines approach. I guess the "correct" way only works if the organization actually prioritizes it and gives reviewers the time to do it the "correct" way no matter what stage the project is in.