umjames

Do you mean like the Fog ruby library is an abstraction over several services' APIs?

The problem is that the boss needs a way to tell if that help is falling on deaf ears. If the help isn't having a sufficiently positive effect, then you have someone who is not qualified to do the work. Is the boss really interested in making his team stronger all-around (not just a few star employees), or does he just not want to have to deal with answering questions from new hires who might be struggling?

I'm in this position right now. I'm not being conceited, but I am in the role of the highly-productive employee. My boss hires people (or we acquire new team members as the result of a company organizational change). Either way, before the new team members start, my boss inevitably asks me to make sure they can do the job. I've never seen anyone in my department fired due to incompetence. Whenever a team member has questions/problems, they almost always end up getting sent to me. It has gotten to the point where I now have to head a weekly developer meeting that is really just a glorified question and answer session.

The problem is that my team members are never weaned off of my help. My boss doesn't seem to care about this. I've overheard him say to people, who were trying to figure things out without having to ask me for help, to just ask me. I understand that it's more important to my boss to just get things done, but that creates an unnecessary dependency on me. I'm not scalable. Hire better employees or take a hands-on approach to training, but don't keep sending them to me all the time.

I can understand why the author's top employees didn't want be bothered with helping those who were struggling. You don't want to be in a position where you have to do your job plus some/most/all of someone else's.

Does Alzheimer's run in your family?

My mom drinks at least 3 big cups of tea daily. There's no way she doesn't have Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia. Although her mother had Alzheimer's also, so maybe caffeine isn't enough to overpower genetics.

I wonder if tea has the same effect as coffee in this case. They both have caffeine.

The proof of the education shouldn't be passing some test or getting a certificate, it should be that you'll be required to use that knowledge in your job. If you "completed" the education and aren't able to do the work that requires it, then you didn't really understand the material.

At that point, it's up to your employer how they want to proceed (re-education, termination, etc).

I didn't know that this had something to do with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I honestly thought it was about Towelie from South Park.

I'd take the headphones off if I could close a door or, even better, work from home. Otherwise, I can guarantee there will be several times each day where a bunch of coworkers (and sometimes my boss) will spend considerable time talking loudly about anything but work.

That must be the valuable communication that articles like this espouse. I don't mind banter if it doesn't bother those working and if the people bantering can actually produce. That's not the case in my situation.

With all the dubstep links here, I'd be remiss if I didn't include Philly's own Dubsef:

http://soundcloud.com/dubsef/dubsef-filthwater-mix-www

http://soundcloud.com/dubsef/dubsef-broverload-vol-2

http://soundcloud.com/dubsef/dubsef-all-your-bass-are

That explains why I like both Knife Party and Pendulum's sound. Set Me On Fire is an awesome Pendulum track.

OK, so no one's going to mention Above & Beyond's Group Therapy Miami set for this year's Winter Music Conference?

http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/above-and-beyond-live-group...

http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/mat-zo-live-group-therapy-m...

http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/arty-group-therapy-miami-wm...

http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/andrew-bayer-live-group-the...

http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/boom-jinx-live-group-therap...

Or Pretty Lights' The Hot Shit radio show?

http://soundcloud.com/prettylights/pretty-lights-the-hot-sh-...

You're welcome.

No one's born knowing how to properly use a version control system, but that doesn't mean you can't learn.

How about when the good tools are free (as far as money), but your boss doesn't want to use them because that would require him (as well as co-workers) to learn something new?

My current employer still uses CVS. No one really uses it properly. I see output files committed to repositories and I think I'm the only one who writes commit messages since I haven't seen anyone else's when I look through the history. I haven't seen anyone else create a branch.

I've mentioned Git both in private and in group meetings, but it always falls on deaf ears. So I use Git via Cygwin and always keep it local on my machine. I have Git ignoring the CVS directories and CVS ignoring the .git directory. The master branch is for things that I check-in to/update from CVS. All my real work is done in Git feature branches.

I wasn't at the meeting. I could have gone, but decided not to.

The only reason I can find for the OP to explicitly call out Yehuda is so that maybe he'll actually read the article and consider the advice it contains. If the article's intent was to bring attention to this type of behavior, then mission accomplished.

I think the OP wishes she had taken a less passive approach to this when considering the sequence of events in retrospect. Sometimes, it's hard to be "in the moment", and only afterwards do you wish you said/did things differently.

Truthfully, I wish she had said something about this to Yehuda right at the meeting, but after it was all said and done and not in front of everyone. However, I don't know how he would have taken it. I could see the situation getting uglier at that point. Hopefully, he can/will learn from this for the future. No one is beyond criticism. We all have things we could be better at.

I haven't played bughouse since college. Spent way too much time during freshman and sophomore years playing chess and bughouse.

Those guys wasted too much time pushing pawns. When you play with/against good players, you learn not to move that f pawn. The way we played, the objective was to attack the king as soon as possible, so if you move that f pawn, I start getting pawns from the other board that I can drop for check that forces the king out to the middle of the board. That eliminates castling, and I can use the pieces on the board and higher-point pieces from the other board to bring about mate quickly.

The thing to worry about most, is getting addicted to bughouse. One more game quickly becomes several more games. You might even start to draw a crowd. Then the day's productivity is shot.

Congrats! Go Philly-based startups!!!!

The Steelers have enough Super Bowl titles already. Why not help your brethren on the other side of the state? The Eagles still haven't won one (and have only been to two). You'd be a permanent legend here. :)

What about the ability to look at API responses in a browser? You can't normally change the request headers a browser sends without some type of plugin.

Including the version number in the URL gets around this and even allows you to test API responses in mobile browsers if needed.

Although I tend to agree that a header-based approach is cleaner and more in the spirit of REST and even HTTP.

You don't have to sell the TV, just don't watch movies on it.

The harder part, is getting non-tech people to join your boycott. Good luck trying to tell people not to see the new Batman movie when it comes out.

What would be good to know is if actors, directors, and other movie makers support the MPAA's actions. With the RIAA, you could sense that musicians often were at odds with the record companies that signed them. Is that the case with movies? Are there movie studios that don't support things like SOPA and PIPA? Maybe we'd have something if those people (if they exist) spoke out publicly against the MPAA.

"Shelved" just sounds like they're waiting for attention to die down so they can quietly sneak it in. The party starts when they're eradicated.

Unfortunately, I don't see that happening. They'll probably just change the name and try again.

Wait, so do you agree that co-founders with day jobs should be treated as first employees equity-wise or not? Your original comment seemed like you did, but this comment makes it seem like you don't.

Personally, I believe that having a day job while working on a startup should not be held against you. If everyone agrees that you're a co-founder, then you deserve co-founder equity.

Do you have less work to do because you have a day job? No, not necessarily. Were you there from the beginning? Yes. Are you involved in founder-like meetings and decisions? If yes, that should be qualification enough.

Do the respiratory problems include sleep apnea? If so, do you use a mask?

As someone who is about to work with a client's enterprisey SOAP API, I really wish I could upvote this article multiple times.

I will be trying this out when I get home tonight! My ][e is as fully functional as it was in the early 80s when I got it.

I'm glad someone remembers these games. I still have a good chunk of these games (some legit copies, others pirated via Copy II+ sector editing). Really glad Bilestoad made the list.

Wish list:

Aztec (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_(video_game))

Below the Root (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Below_the_Root_(video_game))

Championship Load Runner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Championship_Lode_Runner)

Captain Goodnight and the Islands of Fear

Conan: Hall of Volta

A lot of these Java-based portals have plenty of open standards. A lot of JSR-### compliance.

From my perspective as a developer, I don't use the document sharing or publishing features of Liferay. My focus is on the portlet development. This means JSR-168 and JSR-286 portlet APIs.

I know nothing about SharePoint, so I can't really compare the two. I just know that I really dislike Java portlet development, and am ready to never have to do it again.

By portals, I mean enterprise portals (like Liferay, JBoss Portal, Apache Jetspeed, etc.).

The biggest problem with them is that the "applications" or "portlets" that occupy its pages we're really meant for dashboard-like information. Just show the most relevant information in a small space on the page. If you want more detail and functionality, you should be able to click on something and be taken to a full-blown website.

In reality, IT managers here the word "applications", and they then try to cram the full web app into the portlet. So now you're stuck trying to provide web app functionality in an environment where the only programmatic links you can generate are to yourself, you have no ability to control what other things are going to be on the same page as your app. Forget being able to set HTTP caching headers, since you aren't in control of the page.

You don't have to be a CS graduate to be good at programming.

You need to have a genuine interest in what you're doing. Otherwise, you're not likely going to do (let alone enjoy doing) what it takes to be good at this.

You always need to improve your current abilities and add new ones. That can be done by coding and reading (probably in that order). Github is great for this kind of thing.

You need to be aware of advancements and changes in your profession. Sites like HN are great for this.

> There isn’t a shortage of developers and designers. There’s a surplus of founders.

This is especially true of non-tech companies looking to hire quality people for positions in their IT departments.

I currently work in such an IT department and we have a position for a J2EE developer to write portlets for our up-and-coming Liferay portal. Needless to say, we can't find anyone good (outside of recruiters, which we'd rather not use) to fill this position. My boss has asked each of us if we know anyone we can recommend for this position. As far as I know, no such luck.

Personally, I'm not the least surprised. None of the developers that I know would even touch a job like this. Most don't/won't do J2EE. Portals never really took off like corporate America hoped it would (and Gartner said it would). I have some things that I'm working on on the side, and if/when that becomes something, I'll be headed out the door too.

What my employer fails to understand is that they are hiring as if it was still 1998. Developers now have options and no longer have to settle for jobs like this. Their competition is no longer other IT departments, it's freedom of choice itself.

Isn't that what Matz is doing now at Heroku?

There's http://www.usemailroom.com/.

I also think it's interesting that with Jobs and Woz's offices being across the building from each other, that forces them to walk past everyone else to talk to each other in person. That has to make it easier for founders and executives to keep track of how things are going in the trenches. That could also make employees feel that management doesn't consider themselves "above" them.

This is why I hate the term "the cloud" -- because it is too nebulous and non-descriptive.

Actually, nebulous means cloud-like.

Would you prefer the older term "the grid"? They're all just items for buzzword bingo.