akhmatova

Title changed to something less clickbait-y

Turns out the guy in question was in fact a jackass (based on this clip).

I didn't read it that way.

But the far bigger point is that Musk was even more uncivil and obnoxious in his response to that situation.

That was no less than an outright personal attack. As an attempt to wiggle out of a perfectly valid line of questioning (aside from the "fucking mike" part) that he apparently has no intelligent answer for. Unfortunately the clip cuts conspicuously short after that point, so we can't know for sure. But that does seem to be the long and short of this exchange.

Having happy employees is very good for business profitability.

It's what these companies pretend to believe, at least.

Whether they actually, in reality, act in a way that make their employees happy -- or in a manner that is even fair or rational, by any detached observation -- is an entirely different matter.

Unstaffed hotels have a major (in my view, fatal) flaw staring you right in the face: poor security.

The one and only time I stayed in such a place - an intruder was caught entering my room and diddling with a phone I left there - and he only got caught because I happened to double back to get something, and just happened to do so while he was in there.

Never again. And the best part about staffed hotels? "I never have to use my phone, if I don't want to."

"Hotels turn to robots to keep wages down" is the title they meant to use.

Would at least be a lot harder to simply cram one's way through than the algorithm stuff.

My mistake for joining a conversation in which the local neighborhood improvement association was literally compared with the Gestapo.

It's absolutely a slippery slope.

Except that it isn't - and you yourself have slipped into a classic fallacy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

We lost Julie Cruise earlier in the year, too. It's almost too much.

A quick search confirms that are -plenty- of nice, boutique hotels (in downtown areas of the usual fancy cities) offering perfectly decent rooms in the under $300/night range, even on short notice. The only reason we go for the Ritz's price range ($600-$900) is to tell ourselves (or others) that we stayed at the Ritz.

The ability to distinguish between the cost-value ratios of the two categories -- and to understand that yes, even for a large, successful company, unnecessary expenses of this sort do add up -- is precisely the sensibility that GitLab[*] is looking for.

[*] Again, a hypothetical GitLab - the Ritz-Carlton example comes from the blogpost author, and not from GitLab.

The latter essentially translates to the former. They're just trying to drive the point home.

If I’d spend my own money to stay at the Ritz-Carlton (I like nice places, I have the money to pay for it, etc.), then why does this make me a bad fit for GitLab?

Because you missed the crucial qualifying phrase, "every night".

The point of the policy wasn't that one should never, ever go out treat oneself to nice things. But that at some point, it get to be objectively (and grossly) inefficient and, to put it bluntly, reckless.

In fact, most people I know who in fact can afford to stay at the Ritz-Carlton every night (when traveling) don't, just as a matter of principle.

And yeah, they seem to also expect you to have a sense for what's called sound judgement, or shall we say business sense. That is, to know (at least approximately) where to draw the line, without an explicit policy for every last expense category.

And if you don't agree with this philosophy (or it isn't basically obvious to you) - then it would seem you probably aren't a good fit for GitLab.

(In the OP author's point of view, that is. The Ritz-Carlton analogy comes from them, not GitLab).

When Leila asked her manager, Gemma, why Angel was allowed to come to her for decisions, Gemma chided Leila for her “lack of vision” and criticized her “poor communication” and “weak leadership” — all while praising Angel’s “initiative.” Gemma had never raised these issues with Leila before, but in response to Leila’s questioning, pressured her to resign or be demoted.

The whole premise of this article is flawed (at least as applies to the example the chose as an illustration). At the end of the day, it isn't Angel who is "doing" all this stuff to Leila; it's really her boss, Gemma. If Gemma was doing his/her job, this would have been over before it started.

A lot of corporate drama works this way - you just have to learn to read between the lines.

My very bad - please have my sincerest apology.

CSV isn't suitable when you have a nested structure.

As the post acknowledges right about where you stopped skimming.

And you almost always have/need a nested structure, no?

No.

http://synapticpaint.com/dreambooth/browse/

Can you explain the value of these models, please?

This is a serious question. My eyes just see one horrendously ugly (and dystopian) eyesore after another.

LLM is the major trend. Focus entirely on that and the tools landscape and how to integrate it and apply it.

Rather than jump on the same horse that everyone is jumping on, maybe one should start looking at where language models fail -- and from the very nature of how they are conceived and what they are made of -- will most likely never be good at.

For East Coast employers in the U.S. - make yourself a night owl, and be available 9p-11p local time (9a-11a Eastern).

For West Coast employers, you become an early riser: 6a-8a local = 3p-5p Pacific.

That should be a decent compromise that many employers would be willing to make for a highly skilled developer with a solid track record.

Beats me, but it's safe to say that you sure do like changing the subject a lot.

I think if you went there and asked around, you would find that their basic attitude on this question is extremely level-headed and sober.

Nobody there "likes war" or wants to be in this fight as a matter of patriotic belief or some other abstract principle. They're doing what they have to do so they don't end up getting killed or permanently enslaved, period. It's really extremely straightforward and simple for them.

So yes, they greatly appreciate whatever help they can get - and will continue to do so long after the dust settles.

What percentage of the people in Ukraine appreciate what you are doing?

Is that even a question? By all indications, the percentage is extremely high (outside of the Crimea, and some parts of the Donbass).

At around 500 points, members will earn Stamps — that is, a coffee-themed NFT hosted on the Polygon blockchain. These Stamps also unlock special experiences. There will be three levels of benefits and experiences that can be unlocked. At the lower end, these could be online experiences, like a virtual class that teaches you how to make espresso martinis, or provides access to unique artist merchandise. As you earn more points and NFTs, you may then begin to gain access to real-world experiences, like special events hosted at Starbucks Reserve Roasteries or even a trip to the Starbucks Hacienda Alsacia coffee farm in Costa Rica.

Loyalty programs? So this is where we finally get to see the blockchain unleash its revolutionary, transformative potential?

Know that the odds are stacked against you - but be persistent and press on anyway.

The minority who are willing to look past your age (who will also be the better ones to work for) will pick up on your persistence and see it as a positive trait and hire signal.

As to the resume - there's lots of advice out there on resume advice for older workers. Truncating / condensing lists of older gigs is one of the standard techniques.

The rest of what you do is a variation of the same advice as applies to younger candidates - just that in your case it will have even more protective benefit,

For example - even though it may bore you a bit, be sure to both read (or carefully skim) as many modern books as you can that are relative to your field, as well as to stay up on the "shiny" stuff (cloud, containers, CI/CD) even though your gut instinct will (rightly) tell you they may be overhyped or less important than knowing the core principles.

That is - at least know what they are, what problems they attempt to solve and what they are basically made of. This will make is substantially less easy to dismiss you as a dinosaur (inflexible / crusty / less nimble than younger candidates).

Finally: wear your age with pride. You've lived through times, and have seen things these people can only read about (for those who even read these days). You have a rare perspective to offer, and the better folks out there will see that and dig that aspect of you. And will be proud to have you in their corner and on their team.

interviews were far too easy (I’m glad you like me but if you can’t really discern whether I’m good at my job, you’ve probably hired other people who are bad at theirs),

Maybe they have ways of evaluating your potential without subjecting you to an endless barrage of gratuitously difficult (or simply tedious) questioning.

This is my own experience: if the recruiters don't call me back, that means I fail.

No - it just means the decision has been made, and you won't be hired.

Which is different from "you failed". It could just as easily be their failure to evaluate you properly.

So you would probably be stuck carrying two phones around.

The main point is that if landlords want to go this route -- they must provide means of egress, without any additional costs imposed upon the tenant (unless agreed to otherwise in the lease).

This idea that they can just decide to require that you go out and buy smartphone (or to run their app on your phone) in order to gain entry to your apartment -- again, unless you've agreed to a lease that says otherwise -- is (despite what both the lawyer and the columnist in the original article) just nonsense, in any jurisdiction (such as NYC) with a reasonably healthy suite of tenant protect law on the books.

I am not a lawyer, but based on my experience with New York tenant law the attorney is correct that the apartment management only needs to provide you with a means to enter and secure the apartment.

Meaning - if that "means" is a smartphone - then (unless the lease you signed says otherwise), the landlord is obligated to provide you with a smartphone (along with a fully paid contract).

Otherwise it's a lockout, which under NYC tenant law constitutes over harassment. Period, end of story.

In my experience in software it's common for similar words to be used for different concepts in different contexts.

Right, but when it happens it's usually because these words get used differently in different domains.

What's happening here is that they're carelessly (in my view) mangling a well-established concept in a field (speaking of the SQL and database world) where folks are (notoriously) careful about word choice and about what things actually, in fact, mean.

It just feels weird, and on a certain gut level - koolaid-y.

My sql is so much more readable with common logic extracted into ephmeral models.

Sounds great. My concern though with DBT is the cognitive overhead and just plain ... weirdness and clunkiness it seems to introduce as a cost to obtaining benefits like these.

For example if we look at their own documentation:

When using the view materialization, your model is rebuilt as a view on each run, via a create view as statement.

https://docs.getdbt.com/docs/build/materializations

Now, isn't your reaction, upon reading this, some version of: "Whaaat? Views are not materializations - by definition, they are essentially the opposite of materializations."

And yet here the DBT documentation is describing the results of plain old "create view" statements as materializations.

And then we're not getting into even more basic issues - like why we're supposed to believe that code like:

    select
    ...
    from {{ source('jaffle_shop', 'orders') }}
    left join {{ source('jaffle_shop', 'customers') }} using (customer_id)

    select
    ...
    from raw.jaffle_shop.orders
    left join raw.jaffle_shop.customers using (customer_id)

Excellent analysis. But the issue here isn't that someone made a mistake somewhere.

But rather, that at a very high level: Amazon knows perfectly well that a certain percentage of its customers are getting screwed over, just as it knows it could probably do a lot more internally to prevent this kind of stuff from happening. But having sat down and done a "rational" cost-benefit analysis -- it has calmly decided that it plainly doesn't care, as long as it thinks it can get away with it.

That's just the way the company is - from the highest levels down.