strongai

I was the same with soccer. Poor motor skills etc. Fortunately, I was saved by rugby at secondary school where despite my physical uncoordination, I was keen and could tackle hard. As soon as I got into the rugby team, all the bullying stopped.

I regret choosing an elite university (Oxford) and its ultra-generic Engineering course, rather than a more specific course in say, electronics or even maths but at a less prestigious institution. I came out with a paper-thin knowledge of a dozen engineering subdisciplines, rather than truly knowing any one of them. Many of my peers became accountants, many others quickly became 'project managers' - spreadsheet jockeys. I cannot think of any who actually became engineers. Like others, this frustration has led me into a life of continuous learning.

The 'x for y' metaphor is actually a well-respected positioning technique in strategic marketing. You want your product or service to occupy a place in a prospective customer's mind. The easiest way to do that is to place it close to some things that are already in their minds. Creating an entirely new place is much more difficult when time and attention are limited.

Great book on the subject (Amazon link but I'm not an affiliate):

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Positioning-Battle-Your-Al-Ries/dp/...

Dribbles

It's the hostility that would kill me.

Sorry old.lag@gmail.com

Pure curiosity - is this for an 8 hour day? or 10? or more? Just wondering what the downsides are to working for a bank.

Shoot me an email (see profile). Medium sized company - analytics, financial services, other interesting data science stuff. Offices in London and elsewhere :-) I'll help steer you to our HR people and if you're successful, will receive a modest introduction bonus. We pay well, but not investment bank salaries. We have lots of PhDs - they're coming out of our ears, so you'll feel quite at home. It also seems that the planets are in alignment for our tech and its place in the market, so things are very upbeat right now.

Senior technical author. I freelanced from 2004-2013. My very first London contract in 2004 was at £350 a day. Nowadays, it's crazy bad - anything from £200 to £400, maybe £450 if your domain knowledge is spot on. And Google - I'm looking at you - contract rates of £20-£25 an hour have been bandied around in conversations with recruiters. So, no real market uplift in more than 10 years, which is why I'm now a permie (not in London) on £55K basic plus 20% bonus, no stock.

For what it's worth, I was never excited by starfighter because of its trading/markets premise - simple as that. It just doesn't float my boat. The entire proposition sounded far too much like real work. Game? Surely not.

A solution fixes a business problem and can have both product and service elements.

Ah. I hate these kind of puzzles!

Hats off to all those sci-fi stories that described future aircraft as enclosed by glowing silhouettes of various colors. We're living in the future :0)

Corilla looks very promising. Any plans to allow publishing outside of the Corilla platform? For me, it's one of my must-haves.

Port Talbot is my home town. I left many years ago but still keep in touch and visit occasionally. Everyone is directly or indirectly connected to the steelworks.

My father worked in steel, my brother still does, and even I did for a gap year before university.

Everyone (well, in those parts) knows the joke about a man being asked 'That thing up there in the sky, is that the sun or the moon?', to which the reply was 'I don't know, I'm from Port Talbot' (... a sideways dig at the once extreme pollution there).

It's not the most beautiful analogy, but moving away from home to find a job is like committing adultery. Once you've done it once, you're perfectly capable of doing it again.

But what if you haven't? What if you're a steelworker in your 50s whose skills are steel-specific? What if you've never left your home town because of things like rootedness, community - and the good jobs that were once on offer?

Yes it is. I believe the usage comes from the days when calling them 'personnel' was deemed creepy!

Thanks for the intel re the London DO datacentre. I'm glad it's not just me :-)

I just submitted mine. The job looks attractive for a techie who likes writing. Mind you, I'm not entirely sure I like the idea of big blue sitting there in the background, metastasizing its woes everywhere.

UK-based full-time employed tech writer here. Been shaping my experience towards that magic 50% programming (Java, JavaScript, Python) and 50% writing. Current gig pays well but doesn't offer the amount of programming I would like. I've been a freelancer (10 years) before, and it's a little feast-or-famine, but averages out at least equivalently to being employed, with the added bonus that you usually get decent, long breaks between contracts. Various UK government-based initiatives (e.g. IR35, recent dividend legislation) have slightly taken the lustre off the freelancing lifestyle, but not so much that I wouldn't reconsider it for the right kind of work.

I've been seriously considering some outreach to young startups who wouldn't need a full-time writer. Great docs really help to distinguish great software - would Django have become so mainstream if its docs weren't so good?

Edit: typo

I have always wondered why there isn't more tech sector investment in (South) Wales. Low cost of living, good transport links, a fantastic outdoors scene (e.g. world class mountain biking) and strong links with academia. I would choose it in heartbeat over London.

Edit: One of the reasons may be that the politicians' focus is on sponsoring large-scale industrial opportunities to create prospects for thousands of low-skilled unemployed people.

Like you said, examples would be [are] really useful!

Being 47 (I'm older!) gives you a perspective that younger folks simply don't have. How many SV startups are targeting people a few decades beyond their teens?

This looks fantastic! Please could you write some words aimed at potential recruits to qbix? What to expect, what not to expect. I noticed, in scanning your site quickly (... I think all content should bear the 'scanning user' in mind, but that's another topic) that php is mentioned. What php knowledge is required? What JS knowledge is required? Make it easy for people (I mean really, visitors who are pre-tutorial) to decide if they have the wherewithal for it to be worth them making a modest commitment to take it for a test drive.

Heh. We were there in the summer vacation to boost our flying hours on Bulldogs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Aviation_Bulldog. I had joined the cadets relatively recently and so, as it happened, my first solo occurred during that camp also. Because the Lightnings were using the main runway, we were using a parallel grass strip, and flying mirrored circuit patterns. On my solo trip (really just a flight around the airfield) a Lightning passed next to me on its approach and caught me in its wake, flipping me onto my side. Exciting but no drama - I just went around again.

After uni I did sign up as an RAF pilot, but circumstances (and my own fundamental lack of aptitude) conspired against me and I flunked the course (just) before getting my wings. Welcome back to civvy street!

While on summer camp as a university cadet in the early 1980s, I was fortunate to fly (as a passenger, of course) in the training variant of the Lightning from Binbrook, in Lincolnshire, one of their operational bases.

It has always been hard for me to recall cohesive memories of the flight. In the space of about 3 hours, and as a wet-behind-the-ears 18 year old, I was rushed through ejection seat training, sea survival training, flight suit checks, oxygen mask fitting and the flight itself. I think I also had to be squeezed into an immersion suit - the flight was over the North Sea.

As we taxied out to take off, the prevailing wind and the geometry of the airfield meant that we had to pass the rest of my cadet group as they sat outside in the sun in deckchairs, watching flight operations. I gave them a confident thumbs-up and we were off.

It turned out that I would be the only one of us to get a ride in a Lightning during that summer camp (I'd won the draw that made me the first to go) - some combination of weather and aircraft availability.

Edit: typo

Indeed. In my UK primary school in the 1960s, 'Mental Arithmetic' was a distinct curriculum subject.

We've been obsessed with this for some time. In the 1990s, Prograph CP/X was ahead of the pack in this space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prograph

I haven't tried it, but I was pleased to see that there's at least one current product that supports the underlying dataflow language: http://www.andescotia.com/products/marten/

One route would be to explore opportunities for 'pre-sales' roles. Essentially, you'd be the technical go-to person for a customer evaluation of a software/hardware solution. The wider process would be managed by a salesperson, but the evaluation process would be your bag. You need your technical chops plus the people skills to modulate the whole exercise.

Edit: terminology

I'm sure it can't have escaped the attention of the defense lawyers.

More here (trying to unbury it - sorry mods): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10386335

This story is extremely relevant to the general discourse here, and I am interested in peoples opinions. No dog in the fight, but I know people on both sides.