happy_path

Somebody has to mantain "legacy software", heck you can even tell that all software becomes "legacy" at some point.

Without knowing you it's difficult to know why are you selected to work on legacy software. Maybe you're great dealing with old code bases? Maybe other people has a better marketing and come as "rock star" engineers that can work with the last technology?

There are two possible "solutions" I can think of:

  - Move jobs once you're assigned to work on legacy software (change jobs each 2-4 years).
  - Work in a startup where all software is crucial for the company and even if there are no good-practices, you'll learn many "shiny" technologies.

I don't mind doing home assignments as long as they're interesting. Make learn about some technology or some design pattern or whatever. Something that improves my skill. If I am going to dedicate some of my own time to a project, at least, push my skills to the limit and "help me" grow.

I refuse to do basic projects that make me learn nothing and feel like a wasting of time. Most of the time if the assignment is "not interesting" the future offer would be lower than I expect and the daily job is going to be boring.

I think that my point of view is going to be unique here, maybe is because I need a "push" to improve my skills (I'd rather not to be fair), but although I have been rejected from some processes after a long and hard assignment, I have learn something and I'm happy (almost grateful) about that.

Aren't they allowed to have an opinion?

It's not only that. After the Civil War and Franco's regime, Spain's political tradition is to avoid conflict and wars at all cost.

Spain will only veto Scotland if the independence is not agreed between the UK and Scotland (in the same spirit of Spain's opinion of Kosovo independence).

Spain parliament is against unilateral declarations of independence.

The monument was donated to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1887.

According to https://www.atticinscriptions.com/inscription/AIUK14/1

This small stele or plaque was donated to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1887 or 1888 by Alexander Wood Inglis. There is currently no information on how he acquired it.

I assume he (or the previous owner) acquired the stele by the same means the marbles of the Parthenon were acquired.

However, Catalonia was not a kingdom but a region inside the Kingdom of Aragon, like Valencia, for example.

Is the US government going to return their lands to Native American peoples?

There were not "shenanigans", US doctrine is that the shipwreck belongs to the original country that fleet the ship.

Legally the treasure of shipwrecks belongs to the nation whose flag was flying on her mast.

However, as a good faith, a portion of the treasure could (and should) be given to Colombia.

Spain and Colombia are brother countries, I'm sure we can find some agreement (I hope!).

Allow me to be a bit "blunt" and controversial here: Catalonia based their economy in slavery[1][2][3][4]. Are Catalans going to make reparations to the descendents of those slaves?

Sadly, what is in the past cannot be undone. We can help poor and needed people, though. And we should be doing that, independently of their ancestors.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/apr/13/barcelona-sla...

[2] https://www.lavanguardia.com/cultura/20200622/481890711216/a...

[3] https://aldianews.com/culture/heritage-and-history/very-prof...

[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-latin-america-48476378

Another example: Is UK going to pay reparations to its old colonies? Don't think so.

For other similar case (this time the shipwreck was found in Portugal) see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuestra_Se%C3%B1ora_de_las_Mer...

A private company (Odyssey Marine Exploration) salvaged the wreck illegally:

On February 17, 2012, it was reported that U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Pizzo ordered Odyssey to return the coins to Spain by February 24, 2012, where they will be dispersed to museums, not to heirs. The Supreme Court declined to stay this order and Odyssey will abide by the decision.[23] On February 24, 2012, two C-130 Hercules aircraft from the Spanish Air Force picked up the treasure in Florida and transported it to Spain.[24] Odyssey petitioned the Supreme Court to reconsider the issues in the case but on May 14, 2012, the court declined to take up the appeal.[25] The coins have been returned to Spain, whereby Spanish law dictates that they can never be sold to the public.

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

The treasure can be visited at the Museno Nacional de Arqueología Subacuática in Cartagena (Murcia, Spain) https://www.culturaydeporte.gob.es/mnarqua/colecciones/pieza...

Some maps an information about the ship https://www.elmundo.es/cultura/laesferadepapel/2021/11/26/61...

Can't they give a free adapter when selling an iPhone?

I have lived all my life in Spain and that's not my experience. Maybe in some small rural towns you can (illegally) keep an unfinished work for years, as long as nobody notices.

However, that is absolutely not true for most Spanish cities.

You're the reason why "the wisdom of the crowds" doesn't work.

Besides, your behavior is not ethical and you could be causing harm to some (gullible) people that followed your advice.

There are no "burner phones" in Spain. To buy a SIM you have to identify yourself with a National ID card or a passport.

I'm genuely interested, what kind of test could that be? Some tests they have gave me in several interviews:

  - Online shops.
  - Hackerrank questions.
  - Read from a big log file in an efficient manner with Python (did it but there was also a 3-4 hour on-site interview).

That's right. That's the main point in favor of making the candidate do a simple questionnaire in office (or remote but in real time). Only 1 hour of their time is wasted.

I don't think that take-at-home tests are fair. Most of times I've been given one the 3-4 hours have been actually a weekend. In fact, I have the policy of only accepting take-at-home tests that are interesting problems that help me learn something along the process of developing them.

On the other hand, I also don't like on-site interviews. A random question not-related at all with the position you're interviewing for is given, and have to solve it while you're beholded by a bunch of strangers... Being tired/nervous after a 3/4 hour in-site interview, scenic panic... To sum up, tThe recipe for disaster.

Whe I was the interviewer long ago, I gave them a questionary that could be solved in 1 hour. I made sure to tell the candidates that don't get stressed, look for whatever info you want in internet, and that there's no good/bad answers. In fact, I gave them the questionary and once the time has passed I would get them to check the answers.

There was several level of questions, to prune candidates at different levels. That also helped to determine the level of the candidate (I was working for a 200 employee non-tech company at the time).

I suppose that the questionary could have been asked to be completed in-place, in an empty room and without internet... But, what's the point of that? In the real world a developer is allowed to use internet, in fact, knowing to search is a skill I'd like to check.

Besides, if they had some open-source projects I would take a look at that, and at the end, there was a technical conversation between them and some senior developers about their career.

Congrats, you're better than most university students I know!

Being so much close to getting your degree, get it! You are almost there!

Besides, when you have your degree you're going to be above your (average) peer because of your real-world experience in Data Science.

If you can continue working and get your degree that would be superb. Once you have 1 year of experience, I think you could search for much better jobs.

My advice here would be to try to move your career path to Machine Learning Engineering. It is a relatively-new mixed-discipline, mostly SWE with some DS and DevOps. There is a coursera course that treats these topics, take a look to it once you have your degree [1]. There is also need for backend engineers with some DS skills. Try to learn Django/Flask/NodeJS/Go and with your DS experience, you're good to go.

Also, get out of Russia as soon as you get the degree and also, get the EU passport as fast as you can. The political situation is going to deteriorate in the following months. In fact, I would try to immigrate to the EU once you have your degree.

Advice for your future job searchs: Do not get un-motivated or depressed because of not passing the interviews (not I don't use the term "fail"). Most positions are already assigned and the rest of the interviews are a way to avoid nepotism claims or other criticism (or even legal repercussions). You won't pass 90% of your interviews, not because of your skill-set, but because there are a miriad of reasons for you to don't be chosen: another candidate is better/asks for less money, position is canceled, HR don't click with you, etc. Don't get discouraged and assume you're going to have to make many interviews to get a position, that's the game (unless you have FAANG experience), I'm afraid.

Good luck and keep rocking!

[1] https://www.coursera.org/specializations/machine-learning-en...

I don't want to belittle this piece of journalism but water-channel-based irrigation systems were already being used by Romans in Spain.

In the case of Valencia, there's even archaelogical evidence of pre-Roman irrigation systems [1][2].

[1] https://templersdeburjassot.wordpress.com/2018/05/20/breve-a...

[2] https://www.mapa.gob.es/ministerio/pags/Biblioteca/fondo/pdf...

Are you seriously comparing a positive anecdote with several years of issues in his workplace (according to his final remarks)?

What do you mean by "trust"? That searching some term in GitHub can leak some info about your organization? Or that the search does not work fine and return not-so-good results?

I have never been asked to send code in an interview. I have my code in github reviewed by the interviewers, but that code was open source, so not an issue for me.

However, I would not share a full non-open source working code, less so if it belongs to my side job. Send some part of it with some of it "redacted" if they really need to see your code skills, talk about the architecture with them, show them the evolution of the platform (the issues you found and the like).

Leaving this place better than you found it.

Well, for some of them, it is a form of distraction:

See how the current president of Mexico (López Obrador) is making exagerated remarks about the Spanish conquest of Mexico, calling for reparations and asking for an official apology. Why now?

  - Mexico is suffering poverty and a wave of killings related to "narcos".
  - In Mexico there is a European-descendent oligarchy that controls the country.
  - It is a form of keeping the country united and creating an official narrative.

What about the American conquest of Mexico? And the Mexican Empire where the French conquered the country?

On the other hand, it's also the narrative that British and Americans did nothing wrong, so again, it is a form of distraction. Or as Goebbles said "A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth".

Some gambling companies have reached me and I have refused to interview with them. Gambling is unethical as it predates on vulnerable people.

Just say to the recruiter you're not interested.

European here (from Spain). I wouldn't worry about searching actively a new job. Last time I was looking for a job, I did like 20 interviews. No sigle offer. Am I a bad software engineer? I'm not the best for sure, but the worst? Don't think so. After getting the 20th rejection, a big company that I had submitted my CV years ago offerend me a position.

What I'm trying to say is that many times we don't want to see the "luck factor".

Assume in a job interview there is a 90% of probabilities to be rejected. Maybe because of your background, maybe they closed the process, maybe there is somebody that is not as good as you but earns waaaay less, etc. That's life, and that's hard.

My advice: accept it. It's happened to me and it's hard. But life goes on and we shouldn't worry about things out of our control.

However, IMHO, if you don't care for work-life balance, look for positions in startups. You'll learn many new skills and also you'll somewhat "restart/refresh" your career.

If you don't want to work in a startup (job insecurity, no work-life balance, etc) my advice for you would be start looking job at a medium-size company, and change jobs each 1.5-2 years. After several changes, your network would have increase and hence, the probability of having delivered some opportunities.

A note of warning: I'm afraid this topic brings many propagandists. Both in the "Spanish nationalist" side and in the "anti-Spanish" retoric.

The facts are there, search for information, but be aware that for many years the English language narrative of the History of Spain has been dominated by the Black Legend [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend_(Spain)