throwaway_374

Get a lawyer and begin sending threatening letters to the full extent of the law. They will settle.

Most here will say "learn a life lesson and move on". The point of getting legal is investors will be very interested in why the founders have taken advantage of you like this. Naturally the founders will want to avoid risking the investor's cash/rep and getting them involved etc so will likely offer to settle.

A while back I looked at a (HN formed?) startup www.paperspace.io which offered something similar. Ended up not using it due to security requirements as I wanted to host a proprietary process on it but I loved the concept.

Absolutely. I've been to more than one final round where the feedback was "not technically strong enough" but it was clear from the interviewer's attitude that it was largely about "fit" and whether they wanted to "let you in".

Doctors' and lawyers' experiences are not gained purely in school. Realistically, a comp sci major gains immediately usable skills during a degree as compared to either of those professions.

In fact, all your argument points to, logically, is that there is a far stronger case for "more sophisticated professions" to have more gruelling interviewing standards than software developers.

It can't be just me that's thinking... what do execs like this actually even do in terms of adding value to the business? Not just skills wise, but also how is his compensation worth more than an SRE being called out 3x a night to keep prod alive? Is there anything he can do that isn't replaceable by an average reasonably literate engineer?

Not quite. This was merely a simple deployment mishap due to repurposing a flag which triggered deprecated code paths that should have been gutted out.

If you simply cannot afford him, don't bother with wasting 6 months on a PIP. Give him an extremely generous severance (at least 6 months). If possible also offer him some kind of training course options on exit to assist him as these can be tax favourable and $1K to $2K may be chump change for your company but it will be extremely valuable for him. More importantly it will give him some sense of a goal to occupy his time. Career-wise, it also allows him to sell a story to the next employer about leaving you "to further training".

Having managed senior employees before who go through difficult times either through family commitments or health issues, I would say try to think about it on a human level. Not everyone is a 10x fresh grad and I can guarantee you will one day go through the same experiences. I say this as a top school grad who used to be very arrogant in my early 20s but now discovering life's challenges can take a toll on your performance and mental state.

I always thought this was simply nothing more than an overpriced step counter and nothing changed the perception for me - if anything, the glorified marketing felt quite deceptive. Strangely, on the contrary, I find myself addicted to the "step counter" on my Galaxy S6 everytime I go for a run.

" increasing costs to consumers by protecting high-wage American workers from foreign competition?"

Sorry I have to disagree, I am the most vehement loather of Trump and his fan base but fundamentally this just encourages a race to the bottom, does it not?

I'm just not sure what a taxi protest achieves. In practice the protesters and distressed relatives probably need to get to the airport and back in the emergency circumstances. Boycotting political buildings would be more understandable.

Actually he was American born but don't let the facts get in the way: "Mateen was born Omar Mir Seddique[6] on November 16, 1986,[7] in New Hyde Park, New York, to Afghan parents."

"It means that there is no way to solve them deterministically in reasonable amount of time."

On the contrary, the systematic method to hack these seems to be pattern matching and shoehorning into similar problems rather than reasoning from first principles. I'm going through a similar battle, mainly because programming interviews have annoyingly become competitive challenges lately and before adopting a strategy it was an extremely soulsucking process.

Well pardon me for my over-sensitive reductionism and not contemplating the geopolitical subtleties of the situation while my town, family, children and everything I can see around me is being flattened by your tax payer funded bombs. Is it still over simplistic now?

The rise in terror is not caused by radical religious zealots. It's caused by bombs raining down everyday on your life from foreign occupation.

Agree with this 100%. It's soul sucking and destroying but unfortunately coding interviews today are entirely about competitive programming and not about what you create.

So you're best off knowing how to derive an O(N) dynamic programming solution to everything on Codility/HackerRank/LeetCode/ACM-ICPC coding challenges.

WARNING: Autoplay video half way down the page. These should be banned.

What's worse is Codility/HackerRank tests which expect you to come up with a dynamic programming based O(N) algorithm in order to prove your technical skills. This is just becoming ridiculous - I now ask in advance whether any of these pointless tests will be involved and I refuse to do them. I have a github and happy to do take home exercises.

I think the closest I experienced to this was when I first discovered Second Life. My dreams after an evening on Second Life were insanely realistic. That thrill of addiction sounds familiar, almost like a dopamine chasing rat.

It irks me tremendously when we take this attitude. I think the problem is that developers have no spine or backbone and are used to bending over too easily - largely because of the personalities we tend to be "nice people".

As developers we have a number of failsafes and checks and balances in our processes: code reviews, TDD, unit through to integration testing, audit trails on every byte of code changed etc. To suggest that a wrong hire is "too costly" is ridiculous.

Compare this with a management consultant who is often on client site alone and whose work is heavily based on personality - "the airport test" - any wrong move could end up risking the client relationship with the business.

YMMV but if you're willing to experiment I'd recommend looking into nootropics, specifically Noopept and Pramiracetam helped me.

>"yet he's somehow been able to parlay his way into positions of influence by guilt tripping white liberals into giving him power".

So this is what HN has deteriorated into? Really? Might want to check your blood pressure cause all that salt can't be good for you.

Equally I hate it when tech C-execs have never written a line of code, but you come across as politically charged with personal attacks rather than recognising his suitability for the role based on direct and relevant experience. And if we're going to be frank about pd's "out of context joking tweets" here they are:

"In The Passion Of The Christ 2, Jesus gets raped by a pack of niggers. It's his own fault for dressing like a whore though."

"aw, you can't feed your family on minimum wage? well who told you to start a fucking family when your skills are only worth minimum wage?"

"feminism in tech remains the champion topic for my block list. my finger is getting tired."

As it happens I have a poor temporal memory so the most important tool I have is I always carry my notebook and jot down everything that gets said, particularly as my previous role involved coordinating and managing teams and projects.

> except for affirmative action students who get into top schools with much worse scores and GPA.

This dismissive "quota tokens" attitude really irks me. It's one thing getting in, it's a total different ballgame surviving and coming out the other end with a decent GPA. I've seen people of all socioeconomic backgrounds fail and some from remarkable poor backgrounds do exceptionally well.

At the risk of sounding condescending, is this essentially google.com/maps?f=restaurants restricted to 500m radius around my current location?

I was discussing this the other day with my friends who are consultants and they jump through nowhere near the level of interview hoops we have to go through. As developers we have a far more structured approach with checks and balances - a compile, build and test process. On the contrary a consultant alone on client site is a far riskier proposition.

I've complied and edited it purely out of courtesy even though it is frankly total and utter rubbish, but feel free to knock yourself out with all the rest: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.co...

Sorry but this is total nonsense and false encouragement. Let me translate what "command over the basics" means:

If you don't know your Floyd Warshall from your Tarjan from your Manacher then you'll just fumble around thinking you got close unless you have the remarkable gift of being able to derive these from scratch in a whiteboard situation. Also I cannot stress enough how difficult - and entirely pointless - a whiteboarding interview is.

edit: I didn't mean this to come across pessimistic and critical. I just think it's important to serve a dose of reality regarding the standard expected (and hopefully some pointers towards the kind of algorithms theory you should be not only comfortable with but also able to reproduce on a whiteboard under pressure).

The point was simply to demonstrate your immediate pounce to associate the topic with a completely irrelevant matter, as was pointed out in the parent.

So, instead of pointing fingers, I was curious about your thoughts on Dubai's potential Crime Prediction Software.