holograham

Not a ton of details in your post but I will attempt to decipher what appears to be the problem from a tech dev manager perspective

1. Project time - were expectations communicated up front? What estimation methods are you using? Agile scrum for cadences/daily reporting? Your post reads that you did heads down work for awhile. That is a recipe for disaster for a junior dev. Daily checkins (or at least 3x a week) is the norm for my organization.

2. Requirements - see frequent check ins above - as well as what mushufasa comments as well. A HUGE part of great modern development in enterprise is constantly iterating requirements and getting feedback. This is something I specifically sit down with new college hires. This is not college anymore with a well bounded problem - you have unlimited problem space and you need to define boundaries constantly. One of my favorite quotes is: "the difference between a good developer and a great developer is that a great developer knows when NOT to code"

3. Design decisions - does your group have a design review / peer review process? A junior dev should always have a senior dev review code prior to check in. Your check in's should be frequent (daily is common but there is debate on exact frequency). It should not be weeks particularly for a junior dev.

4. Perhaps your most egregious error is your comment that you should have checked other projects. I assume youre working for a large-ish company. It is imperative you do not re-invent the wheel for every assignment. Particularly for the "glue" or standard pattern parts (which usually amounts to 80% of the work). This is something your manager ideally makes explicit early on (perhaps this was the meeting). I have had lots of frustrating convos where the developer took weeks to solve something that was a known pattern or solution if they just went to the firm's stack overflow or checked another similar projects github.

5. Managers are people too they have off days and can be frustrated with a million other pressures going around. I have definitely had days like that and likely took it out unfairly on a junior dev. More-so if this is your managers boss who likely doesnt deal with junior dev's day-to-day. His/Her expectations are different.

dont know anything about the economics panel/survey but citing Krugman on HN is pretty weak given his most infamous quote:

"The Internet's effect on the economy is no greater than the fax machine's.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/paul-krugman-internets-eff...

this is only really possible in a very controlled ecosystem. Apple has this down well but MSFT does not. For example for this recent patch certain (major) antivirus vendors rendered computers unusable with the update. What if MSFT force updated everyone and bricked 20+% of windows users? Not a good strategy.

this ^

Value is value -- for sure

but Value derived from luck of the draw (e.g. Norway's current citizens banking on their ancestors settling in a land rich in oil).

Frame it this way -- would Saudi Arabia be as wealthy as it is today without Oil? Do you think their social and political structure would have produced equivalent wealth as their oil companies?

simple sure but let's talk about what it would take to give a meaningful dividend to all americans

If we used a conservative 3.5% average return to give $1,000 USD for each American (~325M) you need nearly 10 Trillion dollars in this fund or over half of our yearly GDP.

Now keeping in mind this would need to be generated from a tax on some good/service/capital which obviously has a cost component at it's base. Just getting the initial 10Trillion in a fund would be ridiculously hard. Now add to that the fact that 1k is a pittance and figuring out a true basic income -- this is wayyyy more complex.

I'd like to point out a HUGE fallacy in this "simple" plan -- it only works in low population high natural capital resource areas. Alaska and Norway happen to be relatively remote/cold places with an abundance natural gas/oil. Norway's 1T dollar fund would be comical at US scale.

have you ever worked in a government setting? I would hardly call them the epitome of a highly functioning workforce. Laziness and waste is rampant.

Why is this trait desirable vs. teaching self reliance?

Philosophically I personally dont see why the obligation should be on the children to support the parents. The parents choose to have children not the other way around.

I love my parents but do not feel any requirement by them to care for them. They have saved for retirement just as I am. If people choose to not save then their poverty in their older years is a problem they brought upon themselves.

TLDR: 60% DNA shared with humans + 4 chromesomes for easy mutation tracking + 2 week reproductive cycle for fast generation studying + easy to house/keep alive = great lab specimens to test genetic mutations

the article doesnt mention this but I will ask ... does sephora attract more female candidates because it is a very popular makeup brand?

Or perhaps do they also get less male applicants because it is a female dominant brand?

"“Everyone spoke,” she says, “and felt comfortable offering opinions on anything from e-commerce to a shade of blush.”"

For me as a male I would not feel comfortable offering my opinions on a shade of blush. I am not offended by this -- I just have zero experience with blush.

Am I sexist because I wouldnt want to work there but also can see why women would be more successful there in tech-centric roles?

my dad is a chef - he taught me 2 rules for wine:

1. Drink what you like 2. You will always sound like a pretentious douchebag talking about wine

I find these to be universally true.

you are confusing "work" with "value"

it is possible to do hard "work" and produce zero value. Example: digging a large hole in the middle of the desert.

Conversely it is easy to do little "work" and produce tremendous value Example: writing a script in 15 mins that automates hours of tedious CSV combinations and data grooming (I used this example bc I once did this and saved about 15 weekly hours of a highly paid financial analyst's time)

So now we are clear on work != value in the real world

I'll quickly tackle your investment income -- that was a risk buying 20k worth of Telsa. That easily could have gone to zero as an early stage tech growth stock. When buying a stock you are putting your money on a bet that the company will provide more value to the economy. When your bet pays off it is because the company is doing better and presumably, if following all relevant laws, providing enhanced value to the economy.

There is no law of physics in economics. In fact this thinking is practically dangerous and at the least fosters the wrong attitude towards success. Your success is not someone else's loss. In fact in a market economy, your success will ALWAYS be another's gain since they voluntarily gave you money for a good/service they couldnt do as efficiently as you could.

Economics is NOT a zero sum game. You can quite literally create value from nothing and grow the proverbial pie of value in the world. If you work in programming you realize this quickly.

The downside to a market economy is that work and value will never be a fair ratio. While in some ways unfortunate the more unfortunate alternative is everyone produces equal value from doing equal work. But take a minute to think critically about how that would be possible. I'll give you a hint -- innovation and ingenuity would plummet to zero.

You are conflating fairness vs. justice. The world is far from fair -- genetics, place of birth, medical conditions, accidents, etc will always exist like you mention.

The moral/civil question is what is the role of government in an unfair world?

Most governments opt to head down the justice route predominately (e.g. the US's Justice System holding 1/3 of our government powers) while creating a myriad of "fairness" regulations (e.g. welfare programs). The ultimate problem with this approach is people will rarely agree on what is fair. There is no set definition and wants/desires change over time -- even needs do to (like needing a cell phone now vs 20 years ago). This ever evolving definition of fairness is what ensures this debate will rage on indefinitely.

+1 for this. Libertarians are not against laws. In fact contract enforcement is arguably the most important law.

The fallacy in your logic is that the streets were not designed for kids to play in. They are designed for cars to drive on.

Furthermore, like was mentioned by previous posters and the article, there are further legal traffic laws that can be implemented to protect side streets from incurring unreasonable or unsafe traffic (e.g. no thru traffic, rush hour restrictions, lower speed limits, additional stop signs or even speed bumps, etc). By all means, local governments should be using these laws and regulations to ensure neighborhood streets are as safe as possible. However, even with minimal traffic, kids playing in a street will always be a risk. If the street does not have adequate safety measures AND enforcement then as a parent you should not allow your child to play in or near the street without accepting the risk.

do you know the level of security they put their code through? Especially for mission critical systems? Most of us programmers take for granted libraries and COTS products that we find online when we have little idea who coded them and if they put backdoors in them. Most programmers have no idea security of their systems especially if most are put together as fast a humanly possible. Simply put ... you cannot use COTS/Open Source for warefare systems. There is a reason the military now considers battles spaces land, sea, air, and cyberspace.

While this post has some good points it lacks an understanding of capitalism. Mainly that the prices charged are in relation to what the market can bear and NOT just what the costs are. A real estate investor is (just like any investor) is looking to maximize profits based on 1. What tenants can afford and 2. What competitors are charging. Raising rent only works if there are customers willing to pay the increase which is affected by the supply of housing in the same area.

This specific case the tenant raised prices to boot an renter under rent control so its really just a perversion of the rent control law (and another great example of how it doesnt work). When the answer to regulation is more regulation you start seeing an infinite loop. Laws developed -> entrapenuers figure a way around them -> new laws created -> new loopholes found -> repeat

A bit of both actually. No one is immune to some of that bias even the big league players. The over-zealousness wasnt necessarily a turn off but it put the corp dev department in the drivers seat. We could then respond and shape a deal to our advantage as much as possible.

I used to work in corp dev at a big tech company (not a typical silicon valley). This is pretty much spot on by Paul Graham per usual. I was typically the one doing the initial contact with companies (as a junior analyst on the team). I always found it interesting how many HUGE replies I got back from startups. I rarely ever saw a company take PG's advice and say not interested. Companies that were over-zealous were definitely thought less of while companies that played a more aloof game were chased.

Also I can say first hand all of the shady deal playing is absolutely true. The members of the due-diligence team and even the corp dev director you are dealing with are NOT the final decision makers. We are building an internal package that makes it appealing to the corp dev VPs/CFO to bless (and take to the CEO to bless sometimes). It's several layers of vetting and it's just as tedious and bureaucratic as it sounds.

I will say that the due diligence team typically will want the deal to be successful. No one wants to put in all that work to not buy a company. Corp Dev's job is to buy companies so having deals reach the 11th hour and fall through is NOT good. They pride themselves on stats like companies evaluated/year (wide funnel) and having a small fraction actually go to due diligence and the buying process. At the end of the day though, they want to buy businesses.

I have seen this problem with my own eyes. My parents own several (small) restaurants and despite my tech background I struggle to get them to to adopt any sort of technology. The main issue is the lack of data/guarantee that making the leap in technology will result in greater sales. Sure a huge chain has smart business execs at the top who are trained in cost/benefit analysis but for the vast majority of small business restaurants the owner is the chef who knows about food and perhaps the local community.

For example my father is an extremely talented chef but he didnt own a cell phone or a computer until I bought him one 3 years ago. Yes, 3 years ago! He had run a very successful catering and restaurant operation for ~15 years with pen, paper, and a land line phone. And I am not talking a 50k a year operation -- this is around $1M in revenue. I convinced them a few years back to simplely accept credit cards instead of cash only and their lunch sales increased almost 50%. I pushed them to pay for yelp local advertising (after years of resistance) and their sales went up almost 20%. Next I am working on them adopting integrated point of sale registers and integrating them with loyalty cards. I think the cost savings + increased loyalty is game for another 10-20% profit increase. The overall point being that small to medium size restaurants are woefully behind the times and are extremely slow to adopt new technology. I have kicked around a startup idea focused on collating and seemlessly making restaurants like this be able to move into the 21st century. The problem to solve here is creating software to scale so it's not simply a consulting company.

not sure there is much new here. Interesting story for the guy

I find this binary opinion flawed.

Programmers have short term and long term views. If you push a release out with a huge painful bug you will QUICKLY rush a fix out even if you go into technical debt to do so. Alternatively (good) programmers do have long term goals in maintainable and stable code bases to deliver consistent quality software to end users.

Likewise a business-type has short term goals -- quarterly earnings, quarterly service signups, business performance metrics, etc to investors/wall street. But alternatively must have long terms goals too to keep the business alive and growing. Investors do care immensely about quarterly results but they also care about long term results. No one will invest in a company that is likely to go bankrupt after the next quarter. IMO business folks get lambasted a little too much on their "short term" focus. Point me to a company that had a strong quarter than is likely to go bankrupt within a year or two (no hindsight comparisons). Business types are constantly balancing short vs long term goals and companies are constantly figuring out better incentive structures to reward business-types for that balance. Is it perfect? No. Are there exceptions? Yes. But it's what is happening every day in the business world.

Misleading question since it implies that all programmers dont get along with business types.

Clearly a subset of programmers DO get along with business types after all most established companies have programmers working for business types. Similarly many startup founders are BOTH a programmer and a businessperson.

A better HN question IMO would be: How do programmers and business-types communicate better?

not to get into the nuances of how modern democracies work but thinking that politicians are constantly crowdsourcing the best ideas and using that information to guide them is an incredible naive view of how modern democracies (usually democratic republic with additional branches that contain a mixture of elected and appointed officials).

Politicians in a modern democracy do indeed need to stay elected but that is typically independent of what a true, unfettered democracy would produce. Some of this is by design -- a pure democracy would be largely unworkable. At best too fractured and at worst everyone would vote for more benefits and less (no) taxes at the expense of national debt for a future generation.

Mostly politicians vote for what keeps them in office. Which as we see in the US is typically special interest groups and powerful lobbists.

True crowdsourcing occurs in free market economies. We could go there :) The libertarian would say if high speed rail was so in demand and made such economic sense then why arent companies scrambling to take advantage of a market inefficiency to make gobs of money?

You need to realize that, if high-speed rail and the other discussed modes of transport compared poorly to highway travel in economic terms, governments would stop supporting them.

I am sorry but this argument is not gonna fly. Saying that governments are infallible and make perfect decisions or trend toward perfect decisions is simply not correct.

And assuming you mean democratic governments this makes even less sense.

this is a point I can agree with/ponder especially as a techie

the problem is hard though...you could pay for long bureaucratic studies on whether this would pan out or not

or you just do it

problem is that building the cell phone was several orders of magnitude cheaper than plopping down $100B for high speed rail infrastructure. Definitely not the business model of "launch fast and iterate". Which is probably why its hard for this forum to debate it.

thank you happyscrappy :)

Only when being installed. When operating, the true cost per passenger mile is much lower than for interstate highways and cars. It's best to avoid misleading economic comparisons.

Installation costs would be included in your cost per passenger per mile (though likely amortized over the usable lifetime or augmented with maintenance/upgrade costs). But overall I agree with you that perhaps the cost per passenger per mile works out favorably for high speed rail for trips of a certain length (I address that in a different point). I am just pointing out factors the author glossed over.

False choice. Cities have sophisticated, multi-level rail and surface mass transit systems for a reason -- they make economic sense.

What false choice? I am pointing out that traffic around cities is NOT predominately inter-state traffic but local commuter traffic. I agree that city transit can be very cost effective and eliminate local road congestion. However this is all ancillary to the high speed rail argument. High Speed rail is not used for local commuter traffic which I am characterizing as 50 miles or less. High speed rail (and the national funding associated with it) will not solve local city congestion.

I have to ask -- who are you working for? Your arguments are all paper-thin, easily torn to pieces. Roads and cars are democratic? More democratic than a seat in mass transit?

I work for a software company as a developer :) So clearly I am the authority on high speed rail. I disagree that my arguments are "paper-thin" and easily torn to pieces. As far as my democratic statement I will expound as it was used in a context that your quote eliminated. High Speed rail is useful for longer distance travel where speed (time) matters. The frequent (daily/weekly) users of this system are skewed towards the very wealthy who have commutes/business travel that travel distances where high speed rail is cost effective. Thus using federal subsidies (which are pooled for the entire population) to fund a service for a fraction of the population is a hard sell in a democratic government. Roads are an easier sell since most citizens own (or could own) a car and have travel needs that fall within the radius where car (or local mass transit) is cost effective.

A couple of points the author misses IMO:

1. High speed rail is an order of magnitude more expensive than interstate highways. The cost effectiveness of the mass moving people via train vs. via highways (buses, carpool lanes included) is still an active debate.

2. The author cites that many folks use interstate highways daily. That may be true but that vast majority of those commutes are 50 miles or less. High speed rail only becomes cost and time effective over much longer distances. Which fraction of the population need to frequently travel to cities greater than 50 miles away? It's a small subset of the population (and skewed towards wealthier citizens). Roads are much more democratic -- they are available to anyone with a car.

3. While his argument about traffic is correct... where is most of the traffic on interstate highways? Answer: around major cities. The traffic is mostly local commuter traffic that high speed rail would not solve.

A very interesting list to say the least.

The major component of the mega-corp money saving justification is the consolidation of overhead functions. e.g. finance, payroll, HR, media

At tiny companies, these tasks are either outsourced or done by the c-level employees. As a company scales you need departments to handle these things. A company of 50 people may need 2 HR folks but the tasks for HR can scale (especially with technology) such that if that same company scaled to 1,000 employees it wouldnt need to hire 20 HR folks (maybe just 10 total needed) thus saving 10 heads in HR of salary + benefits + office + IT assets + support. Not insignificant sums.

An interesting take-away from this article is how good military software was back in the day -- to think a system developed in the 60's was re-purposed 30 years later to track and intercept smaller objects traveling 2.5 times faster is impressive.

Once, working on military software projects were practically the ONLY programming jobs and naturally attracted the best and brightest minds. Now-a-days with decreased military R&D budgets and the rise of the software startup most developers do not even consider the stodgy military industrial complex as a career decision.