LarryL

Most people read VERY slowly, because they were taught to do so (at school)!

That's something that makes me angry, because reading fast is a HUGE advantage in every setting (even taking into account the speed variability, depending on the topic).

I'm a very fast reader. To give you an example, I can (easily) read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings in english during during the weekend (2 days), and english is not my first language. In comparison, my brother, who has a LOT in common with me (including education level, and going to the same school as a child), reads pretty slowly and would never be able to do that. My dad and others members of the family are also very fast. BUT, we all learnt by ourselves: basically, we -somehow- managed to NOT learn the WRONG way that the teachers were teaching us (mostly: by "talking in our head when reading"). My mom told me that as soon as I started reading I was very fast.

To me, french lessons (middle-school, early 80s) were _torture_ because of that: the teacher assumed that we read slowly, and we would spend hours while a student was reading out loud; myself I was already 3 chapters later (because I was reading silent during his/her loud reading, I simply COULD NOT read that slow!). When we were assigned a new book (usually a couple hundred of pages), I read it in an hour. But the teacher did NOT understand that there were such huge differences between students. It was painful! In the end, my conclusion is that (because of stupidity) reading fast was de facto discouraged. :-((

I forgot to mention that I'm NOT talking about skimming (reading in diagonal with a severe -and acceptable- loss of understanding), when I skim I'm up to 10 times faster. I'm talking reading with almost total comprehension (barring remembering unimportant details like "the color of the cape of Frodo when he left the Shire", or whatnot).

Of course, it must be said that reading speed is a _meaningless_ concept by itself.

Your speed will (obviously) vary A LOT depending on the _context_: are your studying? Trying to memorize? Reading for leisure? Reading in a foreign language? Tired? What is the text's complexity/level? What is your education level? Etc.

Average speed does NOT exist without context. And most articles on the subject fail to put that context into account, it's even worse in the comments...

=> Of course, this article (and the study) detail the importance of that context.

So, every time I read an article about "reading speed", I know that it's going to be painful in the comments, because people who comment -almost- NEVER take the context into account.

BTW, one of the most infuriating things EVER is that in comments, you ALWAYS have a few people with an elitist attitude who raise the "but you are not appreciating the text if you read too fast", they fail to understand that I don't read poetry like a technical book like a children book, etc. Then you have the "you CANNOT understand if you read fast" crowd, because they don't know what is possible, they assume that their speed is "normal", when it's NOT, they cannot understand that they have been taught to read slowly...

Yep, that topic is one of my pet peeves ^^

it is highly unlikely that a "senior colleague" can't understand simple logic.

I've met plenty of people like that. To tell you the truth, it was SO BAD that had I not seen it with my own eyes, I would have difficulties believing that people can be so incredibly incompetent.

I've also met "experienced" people, coming from the best "elite" schools in France (I'm french), that were unable to code their way out a paper bag, but were somehow working in programming or technical team roles. It's always stunning when you meet people who come from high studies, that involve quite a lot of programming, but who know NOTHING, how can they pass the exams is a real question, that puts in resious doubt the value of those schools. Two such people (technical managers) were fired for gross incompetence (after having us lose plenty of time & money). Unfortunately, many others (at various levels) managed to stick around and made things HARD for everybody else.

But the worst is when those people are also JERKS (or worse), as in the OP example. I've suffered A LOT because of that, as have my coworkers. And working as a contractor makes it super hard to get rid of them (though I managed it in one case).

I'm french, and live in France, near Paris.

In France, there is only (AFAIK) _one_ love hotel (inspired by the japanese ones).

It's pretty small and the rooms are not big at all, but okayish (I only visited once).

What's interesting is the history of its creation: from what I've read, it was pretty hard to get the authorizations (which explains why there are not any others). Basically, this is the old B.S. about prostitution. Which is total hogwash because they check your ID when you go in, so it would be impossible for an escort to use it with more than a couple customers (and regular hotels are frequently used for escorting anyway so what's the difference?).

Personally, I think that love hotels are a great thing, much better than a regular hotel, and MANY people would benefit from those. Especially people in alternative sexualities (like myself) for whom finding a place to have sex is often a serious problem: going to one partner's home is often seen as a risk for security & anonymity.

BTW, there has also been recently (one year ago), the opening of a "sex doll brothel" in Paris, and they were also checked by the police... Seriously, a freaking SEX DOLL hotel! It's crazy how anything related to sex in any way creates so much problems.

I find this story disturbing & the implications are frightening (many are addressed in the article).

But one thing strikes me as REALLY worrying: they call it the "MAGIC" box.

IMO, if there is ONE thing that you DO NOT WANT in serious such matters, it is the propagation of the -common- belief that science/technology == MAGIC.

This is already a problem with computers, as people accept plenty of nonsense "because the computer said so", and to be fair technologies like computers have become so complex, it's difficult to NOT have a "magic" feeling to some extent (let's not get into sciences which are IMO even worse).

Relying blindly on something that you don't really understand (its limits, its strengths & weaknesses, the context in which it should be used), is a RECIPE FOR DISASTER.

So when people felt power, they really did have more trouble getting inside another person's head.

Interesting research, I'll be curious to know if it gets confirmed.

Anyway, I can offer a REAL, striking example of how people can change once power "goes to their head".

This is a real story, I was there when it happened, I saw & heard all, I was sitting about one meter away...

This took place in the early 2000s, I was working, as a contractor, in a BIG company. In the room we were several contractors, working for several teams (with different bosses). One of my coworkers was a political refugee in France, he was a political activist at home (an african country under a dictature) and had to flee, so he went to France. I knew he was into politics because during pauses he would talk on his phone and take appointments & the like (I was sitting in front of him, so I heard part of it).

One morning, as I arrived (he was usually the first in the room), he told me that something bad had happened... His teenage daughter was supposed to come and visit him in France (his family was still living in Africa), but at the airport she had been arrested by the police and had _disappeared_ with no news...

I don't think I need to insist on the seriousness of the situation & the fears that he must have had. Police in dictatorships are not know for being nice... You can easily imagine what could have happened to her.

Of course, this had been done in order to put pressure on him.

Then his boss entered the room, to talk about their project.

(Now, I swear that everything is 100% true and not exaggerated.) My coworked started, again, to explain the abduction of his daughter to his boss. His -loud- boss's reaction, with half a chuckle: "Ha! you're a man who brings trouble!". Then he left the room.

I was speechless. To be perfectly clear, this was NOT a "defensive laugh", the type of laugh that you do when things are bad and you don't know how to react, no he REALLY did not care.

My coworker, dismayed, turned to me and said "You know, that guy and me, we used to be like fingers of the same hand. Since he became a manager, he's gone crazy".

I could tell a lot of other horror stories about that manager. A few years later he even cost me my job (I refused a contract that would have put me in his team, this got me fired).

For those of you who may be wondering what happened to the daughter: her family "bought" her back. Corruption goes both ways...

A sad example of how power can kill someone heart...

I fail to see how "we" are forgetting. I also fail to see how "something similar could strike again" is news, since it's a recurrent -scary- topic every flu season.

The 1918 flu outbreak is regularly in the news, especially when the flu season is about to start, and there have been some serious worries about a possible similar nasty flu version in the last past years.

Just last week, I read an article in a magazine about it. Among other things, it explained that the origin of the flu was probably not Spain, but they were "scapegoated" because nobody wanted to be held "responsible" for it.

licked the cobra to full extension

should be

flicked the cobra to full extension

The cobra is a weapon in the Neuromancer's universe, something like an extendable knife/club.

Ignoring the moral/ethics concerns, how would a potential buyer know that the data is legit (if it even exists at all?).

Give me a couple of days and I'll create a fake -but real looking- set of records with millions of false customers (it would be made real enough by using public information)...

If you tell me that they'll provide an extract as "proof", I'll answer: it's easy to cook-up a realistic small sample, just using and remixing former leaks/hacks for instance...

In summary: the money aspect makes the data MUCH more suspicious than a "bragging/4tehLULz" hack.

graphics and charts, do you use any specific tool?

Usually, I used Visio, not really by choice but because it was available and sometimes used by other coworkers (usually for the specs flowcharts). There was another tool available, that was used in one of those companies, it was better than Visio, but I don't remember the name, unfortunately, due to a insufficient number of licenses, I could not use it.

When I do such stuff on my Linux box, I use various flowchart/diagram tools like Dia (and another one whose name I forget). I've also experimented with various text-based solution (LaTeX-based & the like), but with mitigated satisfaction: those solutions where too heavy & cumbersome for my use case.

As you wrote, those ARE time consuming and have the usual update problem. But that cost is really offset by the benefit of clarity. When _I_ gave a module to the testers team, I gave them a brief (15 to 20 minutes max) presentation and my documents & usually never heard again from them (except when they found a bug of course), while with the other modules (made by my coworkers), I saw them asking for more information all the time...

EDIT: came up with a better way to put it: documentation should deal with what a system does, why and where, then how it achieves so in a broad sense, and finally deal with the implementation details (which is the only part we are kinda handling nowadays, as you explained).

You describe _exactly_ the problem. And I've been fighting hard to make that simple idea enter in my coworkers -thick- skulls, but with not much success: they often do acknowledge the problem, but either don't care (disgruntled or not professional) or are too lazy or are overworked and take shortcuts, not realizing that medium and long-term they would in fact GAIN some time... As for the management, I've lost all hope, no amount of discussion can enlight them (they only see "THE CODE").

Great articles (there is a part 2 here: https://blog.stoplight.io/writing-documentation-when-you-are... )

The article is about API documentation, but the points apply to every documentation.

I think however that a few things are missing in the articles:

1- an OVERVIEW/INTENT page/paragraph.

This is THE thing that is missing in almost every -if not all- documentation I've ever read.

An example that I always use to illustrate the point: the "File" API. In EVERY documentation I've ever seen, the usage of each function/method is detailled, but NOT why some function must be used before others (opening a file is NOT an obvious concept); the concepts (what is a file?), the workflow are NEVER explained.

And Files are basic stuff, what about GUIs? Ever used a big GUI toolset? It's miserable! They never include the high level stuff, you have to dig a lot and if you are lucky, maybe you'll find a blog womewhere that gives a few insights in the mind of the creators. IF you are lucky. So you end up using the wrong type of widget or function (because they look alike) until you crash & burn and realize that it was the wrong choice for your purpose, because NOTHING is explained, you have to discover everything at your cost.

2- graphics/workflow charts

This is related to my first point. When I write documentation I include -at least- one high level graphic that shows how the various parts of the system interact, sometimes a flowchart or a Finite-state diagram (when a FSM is used, obviously).

-----

When I give a module to my coworkers (be they testers or users of my API), I give them that additional documentation which makes it MUCH easier to understand and test/use. What I find stunning is that I'm always the ONLY ONE to do so! At most my coworkers will write _some_ documentation to explain a few difficult points, but it will mostly be comments, not documentation for an user of their API/module. And if you point it out, the reaction will range from "I've no interest in that" to "it's not necessary, the code talks for itself"... To them, the -automatically generated- JavaDoc comments are "enough", which is total B.S.

The most infuriating is that all this -undocumented- code is always the result of a HUGE amount of work and dedication. But it is invariably cruely hobbled by that missing step: helping the users use it properly. I see it everyday in Free/Open source tools, and I've seen it in every project in the companies I've worked with (except mine of course)...

So you spend lots of time trying to understand how the stupid thing is supposed to work instead of doing your real work.

There is a LONG way before the importance of documentation (and comments) is accepted as what it is: VITAL. Unfortunately, as for testing and security, management not only don't encourage the practice, but they often discourage it (poo-pooing -or worse- such concerns).

The last line of the article:

This article was originally published in our “Selection” issue in October, 2016.

homophobic undertone

Undertone? The whole sentences are designed to be trollish & are _obviously_ slurs & attacks.

The GP account was created 22 hours ago and has already been downvoted to oblivion... It's a pure TROLL, let's not mince words.

Some people seem to have _evolved_ to be able to hold their breath (over 12 minutes) and work.

Look for the "sea nomads", there have been articles about them recently, a recent (2016) research ( https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(18)30386-6 ) suggests that their ability could be because they evolved a larger spleen (which helps with red blood cells).

I'm french, I live near Paris and very often walk in Paris for various reasons (shopping, etc)

The BIG problem is that the automated public (and free, which was not the case before) toilets are NOT numerous enough (400 only according to the article, what a joke!), you have to _search_ for them, even in the very popular -and touristic- areas where I usually roam. But the other, and far worse, problem is that they are SLOOOOOOOOOW!!!! Obviously only one person can use the toilet at a time, then when they exit, the toilet auto-cleans itself, which takes FOREVER, and I mean a good couple of minutes, maybe more. Imagine a line of ten people in front of you (it happens)... You'll have a 30 minutes wait, if not more!

I won't insist on the fact that after the auto-cleaning the toilets are still (understandably) wet on the floor and the toilet seat, which is not the most pleasant thing. But I agree that it's not an easy thing to do. I will also pass quickly on the fact that sometimes you find used needles (left by drug addicts) in the hand washing bowl...

In some of the most touristic places (remember that France is the most visited country in the world, and Paris draws an incredible number of visitors, especially during the holidays), you can see ONE or TWO toilets, and that's it, for thousands of people! That's a total joke.

As for those new urinals, who would want to use those? I don't want to pee in front of everybody, thank you! There are plenty of possible more secluded spots.

The idea of adding more toilets is one thing, and more efficient (and less cumbersome) models compared to the current ones would be a VERY welcome idea, but this solution is in my opinion not well studied. Plus it does not help women (~50% of the public) who also need to use toilets...

And it would also be good if toilets were available in the subway! That's where I've seen the most people take "wild pees" (usually again a wall in the stations), it's the WORST place, it's disgusting.

The title of the article is misleading, it's not programming that is the real issue, it's billing (the progamming issues are just a part in the article).

Since the Credit Card companies & banks create lots of problems as soon as sex is involved (see FetLife's misadventures in HN previous articles for instance) in addition to the big chargebacks issue, and given that customers lie a lot (because they can), I think that the best solution for pornsites would be something similar to prepaid cards used for Google Play, consoles networks and the like.

You buy a card, this puts a limited amount on your "PornPlayButDontSayItIsForThat" account, it's easy to control, anonymous, limits risks even if the account is compromised or the porn site dodgy (hidden automatic renevals & the like) since at most you'd lose that limited amount, then you can buy porn without the issue of the SO (a big problem it seems) and without any banks (or whatever) knowing about your -still badly perceived- habits.

In fact, I'm surprised such a system (not specific to a porn site/network) is not already widely available. Of course, it would not present itself as "the Porn Prepaid Card" because of the stigma... Note that some sites/networks accept gift cards already (I've checked), but it's not very practical (not fine grained, you must use the whole card) and they don't accept ALL cards, what do you do when you're living in France and they only accept American gift cards? You can also buy "tokens" in many sites (especially Webcams) but they still require a CC, so the problem is not solved. A more general "ePurse" system would be better.

This is much more realistic -IMO- than using Bitcoins or the like (too difficult to use and too volatile).

Of course, to REALLY solve the problem you'd "only" need people to stop seeing sex (and porn) as bad, dirty, taboo, etc. But this won't happen anytime soon :-(((

I find that kind of research disgusting, because their ONLY purpose is to manipulate customers.

I also question the ethics of such studies: how can you justify this, ethically?

Treating your customers like that is also simply unacceptable. Same problem with those psychologists working on games rewards in order to make you spend more.

DISGUSTING.

The article is interesting and raises interesting points. For instance about the "face-recognition" impairment in police officers, which is a serious problem.

I was however surprised that this ability was not well known, I remember clearly reading stuff about it a LONG time ago. Using it in a systematic way & in a police unit may be new however.

And, of course, as EVERY TIME the topic is raised, I was aghast by the complete off-hand dismissal of the human right issues of the CCTV network. It is a HUGE mistake to underestimate the abuse potential, that's why it must be addressed NOW, because when surveillance will be 100% widespread and accepted as "normal" by people, it will be too late to go back. And we are going there very fast as the example of the UK has already shown us.

Some of the worse things are created out of very good intentions, here the police officer is clearly very honest & sincere about his use of the CCTV footage to catch criminals, but he forgets that he will NOT be the only one with access to it. I'd like to ask him: okay, so can you vouch personally for ALL the people who will use that system in the future, most of whom you have never met (and never will)? Do you REALLY believe that there will not be criminals, corrupt public servants or authoritarian officials who will access it (for nefarious purposes)? Note that this is already a HUGE issue with the secret services in all countries: there IS abuse, a lot of it is publicly known, here we'd be giving "the eye in the sky" enabling even worse abuses (more information available to more -potentially bad- people)!

From the article:

“There is a friendly eye in the sky,” a Home Office minister proclaimed in 1994. “There is nothing sinister about it, and the innocent have nothing to fear.”

Stupid quote. The simple fact that he feels the need to say that there is "nothing sinister" is already raising a huge red flag. The truth is that history showed us that Nobody is EVER "innocent", there will always be someone to blame you for something: too thin, too fat, too short, too tall, too religious, not religious enough, etc. You know what I mean, it's a constant in humanity's history: the "need" to find an enemy, a scapegoat, someone who is "different" to blame for whatever issues are currently happening.

It is unfortunate (and worrying) that that stupid belief is so widespread (I hear and read it very often)...

Neat, but for a book about HCI, they sure don't put their knowledge in use for their site! The irony.

Without Javascript enabled, you cannot scroll down with the mouse nor the scroll arrows, there is some strange behaviour: you must first click inside the page before the mouse scrolling wheel works & the keys never worked.

Why? IMO, a HCI site (especially such a simple page of links to articles) should degrade gracefully.

That being said, those articles are interesting.

why is there such a hard dichotomy between "commercial - binary blob" and open source?

I see at least 2 reasons.

1) Mindset (and ignorance)

I've worked in big telecom companies, in their technical teams, which means people who know about programming in big (BIG/HUGE) projects. Even there, many of their -very- experienced tech people were AFRAID of anything open-source. They were terrified that using anything that had the words "open" or "free" (as in free software) would mean that they would have to "give" their code "gratis" and lose their customers.

The irony? Those programs were BIG projects that were only useable with their hardware (think stuff like devices' OSs & supervision UIs for telecom equipments), it would not have worked with other devices and any attempt at an adaptation would have cost more than developing from scratch. Add to that that they only sold to a handful of companies (those hardware + software solution are expensive) so they would immediately have noticed that something was wrong, and you see how INSANE it was that they were afraid. They had completely bought the FUD from Microsoft and the like.

And thoss were TECHNICAL people, I leave to your imagination the attitude of managers... :-(((

2) Quality (or lack thereof)

A lot (if not most) of code done for "enterprise software" is of pretty bad quality (and I'm being nice). I've seen such horrors that you are left to wonder how anything AT ALL could work. The incompetence was staggering, comments and tests inexistant, no source management, no documentation, "if" conditions spread over hundreds of lines, 10 thousand lines of SQL in a single file, config files thousands of lines long maintained by hand (which I showed contained hundreds of errors), etc.

Showing how "sausages are made" (an horrifying view) would be bad, maybe even suicide (once their ineptitude would be proven) for those companies.

On the other hand, the bad quality would have quaranteed that nobody used their projects (LOL). Even compiling them was a HARD task. Real example: I had just arrived on a project where the most experienced guy was unable to install on my computer the tools needed for development... I had to write code "blind": without linking & testing nor documentation. Am I surprising you when I tell you it did not go well? (And they had the nerve of blaming me for their incompetence!)

The article is quite interesting, it sums up many numbers and projections I had read in several places.

But there are 2 other interesting factors to an aging society that they did not mention:

- what will the retirees (~60+ y/o) do with their time? Not a small issue, I'm not thinking about economical consequences but simply social consequences & people's well-being. For some people, their job means A LOT, and once they retire, they don't know what to do. My dad is an example: R&D engineer, worked a lot until he retired, nowadays he just roams around the house (a sad view).

- what is going to be the impact of such a huge number of older people on the moral views & technical progress? As you know, many older people grow more & more conservative ("stuck in their ways") or even reactionary as they age. This creates a serious number of potential issues with social progress and probably technological as well. Older people are often "left behind" by new technologies & social changes. This was not a major problem when they were a small minority, but once they'll become a not so small minority, their voices will be heard much more. I wonder if this could not lead to some stagnation or at least a slowdown in some areas/subjects (things like gay marriage, acceptance of alternative sexualities, etc.), or -at worst- a throw-back in some areas (look how HARD sexual freedom -in the broadest sense- has been hit those last 10 to 15 years, will you expect conservative/reactionary people to hold liberal views on that?).

A very interesting read.

I did not know that alcohol effects varied that much between societies & context/circonstances.

I found especially surprising the part about how in some cultures drunkenness is used as an excuse for violent behaviour while it's NOT elsewhere. I don't drink myself, but I've seen a lot of other people's behaviour in France (being loud, more or less belligerent, removing clothes, etc.), but had not realized it could be otherwise in other countries.

I've always thought that being drunk (or drugged) was NOT an excuse for bad behaviour (especially picking fights): that's much too easy/convenient to justify oneself like this! Now, I've learned that I was even more right than I thought!

Not to mention that MANY (too many!) websites don't display anything AT ALL, if you don't have Javascript enabled.

Why?

I'm not talking about "app"-like sites (like Gmail), where it -somewhat- makes sense to use Javascript, but blogs or information sites (i.e. text + images).

The worst is that when you look at the domains to unblock, you often get dozens (not counting the Ads networks that I have already marked as untrusted)! This is crazy, a pretty simple page should NOT require all that complex (and slow) architecture.

And don't get me started about the comments sections! Not only do they usually require Javascript to see anything (which is stupid since just reading them should not require it), but ALL their UIs seem to compete for the title of "most aggravating interface ever". They always seem to try their hardest to be slow, confusing, and once you get more than a few dozen messages on the page (as they load on demand), they become simply so difficult to use that it's a chore then a torture to try to reach the last (or first) one.

I could also rant about the loss of bookmarking functionalities (because of infinite scrolling for instance), and of the previous/forward browsers' buttons...

In summary: in many cases, if not most, Javascript is used in a way that kills the user experience instead of enhancing it. And I don't see things getting any better, quite the opposite.

I completely agree, I was about to write the same: that name is VERY badly chosen, it conveys the wrong idea to anybody who has not read the origin of the term, and makes it sound horribly pretentious (something I hate).

Whereas the ideas are quite sound (and common sense). I also find it weird, to say the least, that so many people seem to rediscover those ideas that have been known -and advocated- FOREVER by people with a clue (look at Jacob Nielsen for an example).

I also enjoy the irony that the writer uses a VERY BIG font for the titles (H1), that "brutalizes" (LOL) my eyes, especially the HUGE title of the article: they are MUCH too big.

BTW, it's "béton brut" not "betón brut", the typo makes it seem really weird for french people. Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9ton_brut .

Marder and Henderson worry robo-graders will just encourage the worst kind of formulaic writing.

they will quickly learn they can fool the algorithm by using lots of big words, complex sentences, and some key phrases - that make some English teachers cringe.

Spot on! That's already the case with real teachers, with a computer it'll be hundreds of times easier (and horribly counter productive for the students' formation).

Back in the day, when I was a student, we already did a LOT of padding in our essays: writing pages upon pages (length mattered enormously!) of loooong sentences designed to -basically- make the discours look much more clever (and accurate) than it really was. I'm still puzzled why our teachers did not notice the obvious B.S. that it was! Seriously, I managed to pass some classes (university) with almost no real meat in the text. I just managed to write a coherent & logical argument, with a minimum of (vaguely remembered) facts, and that was enough to get a passing grade (but not a great grade of course). Ridiculous.

---

Another fundamental problem is that even teachers don't have the same views upon what is a good essay. For the worst essays, I think they will agree: bad grammar, typos, no paragraphs, no logical structure, etc. But once you enter the average (or more) quality it becomes much more difficult to agree on which text is better! There is a LOT of subjectivity and personal taste, no matter what directives were given from the educational board, so your results would vary a lot depending on your current teacher.

Some teachers for instance are very narrow-minded, they expect students to "regurgitate" their lessons almost word by word, others appreciate a student's attempt to insight & originality / independence of thought. I've been in the french education system for a long time (including 6 years in 3 different universities), and it was shocking to see how much of a grade would depend on the teacher & of their perception of you (because that's also a factor, even if the teachers will swear it's not the case).

Even for technical subjects it's not obvious AT ALL that the teacher is right and rewarding the best answers. Now that I have many years of programming/projects management behind me, I see plainly the mistakes & B.S. that some teachers would give us. And I've had coworkers who were still part-time students explain some of the incredible misconceptions of their teachers, it was almost beyond belief! Those teachers really lived in another world, they had no clue.

Well, at least, if you are graded by a program, you know that you will only have to learn that program's "tastes/patterns", instead of facing the unknown of being graded by a random teacher (who may like your style or not). That's a small consolation.

Contractors aren’t humans

Real story from one of the (big) french telecom companies I worked for, as a contractor (a few years ago)...

In that company, a regular employee was given a full desk, contractors were only given 2/3 of a desk (meaning 2 desks put side by side for 3 persons).

Also, contractors were NOT allowed to go to ANY conference. Even when it was about technical stuff that was directly for their project. We had to rely 100% on a transmission of information by our managers/team leads. This led to humorous results, to say the least. Things like: a BIG meeting with plenty of people and managers, who then decided a HUGE technical change on the network, without the ONLY expert because he happened to be a contractor. Once given the results of the meeting, the guy was in a "WTF?" shock. He told me that be immediately binned the request: it basically asked him to disable the authentication server! Not the best decision for a BIG ISP, LOL. Seriously, that's almost beyond belief. (But I have other incredible stories similar to this one).

As a contractor, I have really been mistreated A LOT. So much so that I've sworn never to do it again.

I don’t believe for a second that someone who would torture or abuse or kill someone on the orders of someone else was ever a ‘good person’

That's easy to say. But context matters a lot!

What about this: your family is held hostage, or you live in a dictature where disobedience means at best prison, and often retaliation against your family. Real example: I've met a guy -a political refugee- at work whose daughter was ABDUCTED by the police of his country to put pressure on him! Can you imagine his anguish? Now, you are ordered to go in this room and "extract a confession" from someone or to kill them. What would you do? (Knowing that there are NO CHANCES that you can escape/run without awful consequences at least on your family, it's not a movie).

Same for going to war. Many times in history have the poorest been forced to go to war under pain of death (and possible retaliation on their family). What would you do in such a situation? Especially when you are poor and without "connections".

Truth is that it's very easy to force people to do awful things by the use of force/coercion. Very few will want to be martyrs or put their family at risk.

Last, the marxist culture. As long as you earn money, you’re assumed to be an asshole, [...]

The above quote is simply false, it's nonsense, a HUGE generalization and a big exaggeration.

I'm french. And I'm 47, so I'm not (or no longer) the naive just out-of-school type...

The "marxist culture"? In France?? France is a very conservative society that leans a LOT to the "right". We are certainly more "social"-oriented than many countries, but the mindset is still _very_ conservative. Religion (Catholicism) is still quite present (even if people don't attend church), for instance attitudes towards sexuality are still pretty conservative, even if it's MUCH better than in my youth.

As for "earning money == asshole", that's also an exaggeration. What people here don't like is the people who put their money in your face (not always realizing they do so), and there can also be envy. And in the other direction: in my family there are some quite wealthy people, and THEIR attitude is really bad, they are extremely contemptuous towards everybody else (myself included) and always forget that not everybody has had all the advantages (financial, connnections, etc.) that they have had. Try to picture (a REAL story) when you are 15 years old, and your own cousin (also 15) boasts about what studies he's going to do and that you (his cousins) are all unworthy and beneath him.... (Note: ALL those other "inferior" cousins now have at least a 5 years university or equivalent diploma, mostly in STEM, some from the most elite french schools).

[I'm french] The contractors market is BIG in France. At least in the computers industry. And it's getting bigger and bigger.

The current trend is to externalize ALL the computer-related work, which is crazy as in the companies I've worked at, we (contractors) were in charge of the "crown jewels" of the company; without us, nothing would have worked. Nothing. So, yes, we are easier to fire (by simply stopping a contract), but our knowledge is lost, so the productivity takes a HUGE hit everytime (and don't ask me about documentation or knowledge transfer, those are considered a loss of time by the management!)

There are laws against it, to prevent the "disguised worker" phenomenon, but those laws are useless and ignored or there are work-arounds. The truth is, when you stay for more than 3 years in the same job (like I did), it's obvious that you ARE acting as a regular salaried worker.

Nowadays, it's much more difficult to find a job at a company than it was 20 years ago (or more). Consulting/contracting companies have replaced all those workers. with HUGE negative consequences on productivity, loyalty & workers' attitude.

In the -big- telecom companies I've worked at, as a contractor, you had 50% to 80% of contractors in the teams!

About 15 years ago, I worked in a BIG telecom company, who stopped ALL their contracts before the end of the year (to have numbers that looked "good"). All activity ground to a halt, because the people who "did stuff" were the contractors. Nothing was done during the 3 months period it took to rehire (mostly the same people). Salaried coworkers who were there during that period told me that the corridors were empty, and that it felt really weird to come and work in mostly empty buildings... Of course, they lost many people who had started other contracts. A smaller company would probably have gone bankrupt.

what does the EU offer other than a lot of regulations

The fact that there have no longer been wars between the participants?

After thousands of years of endless strife, wars & massacres.

Ask people from my great-parents generation (who lived throught WW2) if this is not a HUGE benefit...

Why Quicksort is the best sorting method?

This must be some kind of joke. That's first-year student level of naivety here! (And I'm unfair to most students.) I remember learning about sorting functions, when I was a teen (in the 80s), and even in the book it was NOT written that it was the BEST method, and it was an entry-level book, for beginners.

Recruiter: I have to check that you know the right answers.

Sums up the whole thing I think. It's impressive.

Why do they even need a HUMAN then? Just use an online test, it won't be worse.

You should learn the Linux function calls, how the TCP/IP stack works, and what big-O means to eventually qualify if you are interviewed at a later time.

The level of arrogance and stupidity is stunning (especially after the previous questions/answers).

If this is exactly what happened, and not an exaggeration, it's incredibly embarrassing. If it had been me, I would not have hesitated to have a few strong words and would have put the interviewer to his/her place. Sheesh. That attitude of theirs is almost beyond belief.

I'm almost reluctant to believe that it really happened, especially in a big technical company (even if the recruiter is a third party). Unfortunately, after many years in the field and meeting a HUGE number of arrogant & clueless people with bad attitudes, I suspect it is probably true.