almeria

Very helpful, thanks

Thank you. I am now enlightened.

Thanks for the detailed and nuanced response.

Which, if I can attempt to boil it down to one sentence, would seem to be: "Tests don't seem to be a good predictor of college success, even when taking GPA into account. But they do seem to promote diversity."

And to which I would like to add, solely from anecdotal observation[1]:

"They also provide a second chance for a significant number of people. Even with a bad year, or even two, in high school -- this doesn't necessarily mean you are doomed to a lifetime of minimum wage servitude. If you have the intrinsic cognitive skills, you can easily do moderately well on the SAT, even without prepping."

I would like to consider diversity and the possibility of a second chance to be not merely incidental, but essential benefits to be striven for in the admissions process. Instead of simply stack-ranking based on the most easily demonstrable predictors of success.

[1] Including observations of some of the smartest and most creative and inspiring people I have ever met -- but again, that's anecdotal.

Anything more about Kafka you can tell us?

Seriously, the one time I was in a situation where much of the team seemed hellbent on this "just put all in Kafka" idea (without really understanding why, exactly) the arguments they came up with were not too dissimilar from what you've shared with us above. It all seemed to come down to "OMG databases are hard, schemas are hard, our customers don't understand the data they're shoving at us. But Kafka will take care of all of that for us. Because, you know, shiny."

That said I'd still like to have a more ... balanced understanding of why Kafka may not necessarily be The Answer, and/or have more hidden complexity or other negative tradeoffs than we may have bargained for.

And what about predictions based on GPA and test scores?

As has been in use at UC and just about everywhere else, up until now.

In math terms: just because predicts(A) > predicts(B), it does not follow that predicts(A) > predicts(A ∪ B).

Agreed, and you made an excellent call there.

If network ops is your bag, then yeah, maybe you "ought to" know about what's in the article.

Otherwise -- it's just pure FOMO-based clickbait.

Depends what you mean by "good".

For the ruthlessly cynical and basically destructive ends toward which this man has devoted his life - his judgement is arguably quite effective.

That is, after all, how you get to be "America's preeminent living statesman".

Did we ever have any reason to believe that slogan?

The $500k fine is of course a complete joke, considering the seriousness of the matter at hand.

But "as the company enjoyed booming and historic sales with its stock price doubling, Amazon failed to adequately notify warehouse workers and local health agencies of COVID-19 case numbers", the state's attorney general Rob Bonta said.

"This left many workers understandably terrified and powerless to make informed decisions to protect themselves and to protect their loved ones."

Amazon lurkers out there - especially L6 and above - do you have anything to say about this? Anything at all?

Or are you so used to hearing such patent bullshit from your higher-ups (of the sort pasted below) that it just ... goes through you?

Nothing personal - I'd just really like to know.

"This settlement is solely about a technicality specific to California state law surrounding the structure of bulk employee COVID-related notifications," the spokesperson added.

"There's no change to, or allegations of any problems with, our protocols for notifying employees who might have been in close contact with an affected individual.

"We've worked hard from the beginning of the pandemic to keep our employees safe and deliver for our customers - incurring more than $15bn (£11bn) in costs to date - and we'll keep doing that in months and years ahead," they added.

The fact that you don't see a need to offer any justification for that statement ... proves PG's point.

The same way we ramp up on anything: by building a system that (actually) needs it. The XYZ (service mesh, provisioning, etc) will fall into place, from there. Or not -- if it isn't really needed.

But in general: learning by building stuff based on a real need -- even if that "need" is just to scratch the itch of some personal project you've always been wanting to do -- has about 10x the staying power (and "interview cred") as what one gets when starting from the mindset of "oh shit, I'm falling behind, I gotta cram on this stuff".

And on top of that: knowing when you really need X or Y, and when you don't -- is often as valuable as, or even more valuable than simply knowing how to do X or Y.

The room was lit by a small upper window, and shows no evidence of having had any wall decorations.

So even slaves at Pompeii had a window to get light from, we see.

Who cares about recruiters?

The point there's no need to feel smug about people who are dealing with seriously nasty stuff.

If you are a toxic moron who will start badmouthing their former colleagues

Or are dealing with a genuinely painful day-to-day work situation and are struggling to keep a lid on it.

I get the point that venting about the problems of one's current or previous environments is bad form, and not anything anyone really wants to hear about it. But the touch of schadenfreude in your characterization of the (often very real and painful) situations these people are helping doesn't exactly help, either.

The situation is in no way symmetric. I think we can let it go at that.

He didn't merely call him "ignorant", but "crazy". Both are ad-hominem attacks. What I don't get here is why you're trying to soft-pedal this very obvious fact.

"Crank", "Toxic" "Bully"

Accurate and justified, in light of the aforementioned unprovoked attacks.

He just thinks that because he's a billionaire, he can get away with it.

It wasn't "embracing the outrage"; rather facing up to the fact that -- whatever the merits or lack thereof of his proposal -- the donor's language was intrinsically manipulative:

This windowless thing is just a bunch of crazy suppositions by an ignorant man.

At the end of the day, this just isn't the kind of person you want to sit down and do business with. No matter what dollar amount he's trying to jerk you around with.

https://archive.md/64mW2

https://archive.md/frXgb

The idea of making adults share bedrooms is very bizarre.

True, but if you're asking why anyone would put up with that -- it has something to do with money.

This windowless thing is just a bunch of crazy suppositions by an ignorant man.

Wow. For the sake of its reputation, legacy and future funding from other sources, which, over time, will utterly dwarf the dollar amount of this toxic "gift" that this crank billionaire is trying to twist their arm with --

Let's all hope that UCSB comes to its senses, and cuts all ties with this bully as soon as conceivably possible.

I mainly found that people who are miserable at a job were miserable at every other job too.

That's not what I find at all - I can't even count the number of times I've been a shoulder to cry on for friends caught in miserable work environments, going all the back to grad school. And BTW I do mean literal crying in some of these cases - in others, it's been "merely" confessions of deep anxiety, hopelessness, insomnia and thoughts of self-harm.

Yes, there have been a few "miserable everywhere" cases, but at most they've been 10 percent of the batch. For the other 90 percent - it's clearly and objectively a result of the shitty environment they've been thrust into.

The flip side of this sentiment is expressed quite eloquently in a sibling comment. In fact, we might even say the commenter is "crushing it":

One challenge is that even in sucky workplaces, there always seem to be champions that will tell you how great it is.

If I hear people say they are (or were) miserable at a certain job - I tend to take their word when they say there's a reason for it. Your take seems to be... they just ne'er-do-wells who are looking for something to vent about. But that's the difference between you and me, I guess.

Take the Time to Actually Research Someone

Nice sentiment, but it's never gonna happen.

Recruiters are spam bots, period. Their job is to smash square pegs into round holes. Use them or don't use them... but the sooner everyone on both sides of the hiring equation realizes this extremely basic and obvious fact, the better.

There's little worse than a friendly but incompetent teammate, who will often get too many passes and second chances (because they're well liked) before being terminated.

Except of course for the perfectly (if narrowly) competent but decidedly jerkface and/or outright asshole teammate. Who is even more likely to get a pass for being such a "rainmaker". Or because "it's crunchtime and we need all the firepower we can get our hands on".

Which was basically the article's point.

Just great, you can be sure - as soon as their options vest.

For high school students with aspirations in the tech field it is like the MIT, Caltech and Stanford all rolled into one.

It may be sort of comparable to that in terms of fostering startup-oriented skills and business connections.

If that's your only measuring stick, that is.

But in terms of developing a solid intellectual foundation for dealing with the world (which just so happens to involve other aspects than the skills necessary to create a hot tech startup) -- just on first principles - there's no way the educational benefit of an accelerator program can compare with the core foundational training of top-tier 4 year STEM program. You know, in things like math, science, and yes, liberal arts and overall personal development.

In the sense that henceforth we will no longer be allowed to use Oldspeak gendered pronouns - it is clearly mandating (in this particular context) that we adopt a more restricted form of expression.

What is the SRP?

What is the Open-Closed Principle?

What is Liskov’s Object Replacement Principle?

What is the Interface Segregation Principle?

If you believe that being able to recite answers to questions like this makes you a good developer... then you probably also believe that it's possible to get a University Degree in 3 Minutes.

From Episode 6, "The General":

Number Twelve: What was the Treaty of Adrianople?

Number Six: [looks a bit puzzled, but answers automatically] September... 1829.

Number Twelve: Wrong. I said "What," not "When." You need some special coaching.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0679186/characters/nm0001526

Here's about where I stopped reading:

Saying that you have to code to be a CTO is like saying that, in order to design a skyscraper, you have start as a cement mixer, then work your way up to girder riveting before finally hanging drywall and installing windows before they let you design the building.

No it isn't, and this obviously poor analogy (based on a rather severe misunderstanding of what software engineers -- "coders" in the rather condescending parlance used -- actually do at their day jobs) only serves to demonstrate just how shallow and useless the "gravity-free", deeply conceptual thinking the author implicitly trumpets his own skills in ... actually is.

In fact I do believe that not only can non-coders do perfectly well in management roles in technical organizations - in proper proportion, their diverse intellectual backgrounds can be highly valuable. But -- save for rare exceptions[1] -- as CTO, please no.

And to have managers at any level spouting such patently empty rhetoric as exemplified in this post -- oh heavens, please no.

[1] A leading (but non-coding) scientist at a genuinely science-driven organization, say. But even then, they're better positioned as a chief research officer or something similar than CTO.