ltrcola

The problem is that those candidates also support other things. If they donated money to these candidates, they are responsible for those other things too.

It sounds like a new car name. 2020 Toyota Vercel. Wasn't there a model called the Tercel?

I like Hangouts overall, but the killer feature that's missing is a good gallery view where I can see more than 4-6 participants at a time. Zoom is really good at this.

Why would someone bring it up at every meeting? That's a pretty big straw man argument. I'm sure there are outliers that do that, but they are rare.

On the other hand, many gay folks are afraid to even mention their partner at all at work, even casually in the what that most people do. In that case, the belief that "gay rights are political" that some folks have are creating a toxic environment.

Companies themselves are inherently political though, just by existing. They exist in the context of society and are made possible by the legal structures created by politics. And they generally advocate for themselves within the political system (a good example is lobbying).

So there are certainly limits in the workplace and there is a line to toe for toleration and polite conversation, but saying "politics do not belong in the workplace" is pretty absurd.

I just tried StackBit this weekend. It's still in beta, but it's pretty slick

https://www.stackbit.com/

Netlify has been pretty great so far. My team was able to use the promise of a super quick CMS integration with Netlify CMS to justify getting out of building another nasty WordPress site (what our editors are familiar with). The actual Netlify setup caused no trouble at all and let us seamlessly move off of GitHub Pages, and now we can put in an integrated build process with NPM or whatever else we need.

Netlify CMS itself is a lot more raw but I see huge potential there, especially since it's open source. Our InfoSec folks loved the idea of content changes as commits. And the maintainers on Gitter are super open to help folks and work through changes. Already submitted a PR that was accepted and has made it into a release. And we haven't paid them anything yet, even with Google Single Sign-On integrated.

I wish they spent a bit more time on the CMS part of the equation. It's hugely important to enable content editors to make changes. The solution isn't that valuable if it's limited to devs only. I also don't think there's a clear winner yet. Maybe, Contentful if you have a boatload of money, but I certainly don't.

I did just implement Netlify CMS in a project though. Super easy to get set up and it's open source. It's missing some things from more polished CMSes that you might expect, like editor roles, but it's still pretty young. The project lead is really responsive and I have high hopes for it long term.

Hi! We do have some remote folks and I think we're open to it on a case by case basis. For this front end position we're starting a new team and I think remote would make that pretty difficult at first. Our Platform and Product Engineer postings may be more open to that right now.

Hopefully as time goes by we have more flexibility :)

Dwolla | Front End Engineer | Des Moines, IA | ONSITE

Looking for a smart and compassionate person to work with me on a Marketing Engineering team. We're doing our best to cultivate an inclusive culture (don't be an asshole) and to build a useful SaaS product (API) that we can be proud of. Des Moines may be flyover country, but it's sort of a hidden gem. I don't care at all if you have a degree, only that you've got some experience and are good at learning.

Here's the start of the actual posting:

We care about mastering the ideal platform to move money. At Dwolla, we empower our engineers to select the right languages, tools, and libraries for the job and deliver products based on those choices. If you want to become of a master of your craft while building something that matters, Dwolla may be right for you.

Our Front End Engineers design and build usable, performant, and beautiful user interfaces that help our users accomplish their goals. As a member of the Marketing Engineering team, you will work closely with marketing stakeholders to build web experiences that communicate the value of the Dwolla platform to potential customers, as well as maintain a strong and cohesive brand across all of our properties.

https://hire.withgoogle.com/public/jobs/dwollacom/view/P_AAA...

or check out all our postings here: https://www.dwolla.com/careers/

I've had the misfortune of having to maintain and extend a new WP install now, where we used Umbraco before. Literally everything about Umbraco was better except for two things: 1) the requirement to run on Windows 2) the number of available plugins was smaller

The number of plugins thing is offset by the reality that Umbraco plugins were generally higher quality across the board.

What you gain, though, is a sensible way to create a content structure/ component blocks and templates that work in a standard MVC way with a data model and views. WordPress on the other hand... I want to cry every time I look at a WordPress template, even when using improvements over the core like Roots provides with Bedrock and Sage. It's all imperative functions that modify state, global vars and functions, exceptions to remove all sorts of random bundled scripts and an outdated version of jQuery, just barf-ola.

And that's not even getting into the fact that by default it runs basically everything on every single request unless you install a third party caching plugin. Good luck loading config values or whatever on "startup" because the concept doesn't exist. Umbraco had a much higher level of performance out of the box, and could use generally the same additional caching techniques and performance techniques if you want to.

I truly think these types of CMSes are on their way out, as they tie the presentation layer directly to content management. The future, to me, is looking like Headless CMSes linked to a static site generator like Gatsby or React Static.

Exactly. I don't think they are accounting for how some people react to interviews. I've had candidates who have been explicitly nervous and stuttering, and we've consciously had to decide not to hold that against them. They turned out to be a great hire.

I think I can do okay in coding interviews, but only if I prep for that style of work first. It's definitely different. I'm perfectly (or at least acceptably) competent in my day to day.

Not sure if I communicated what I meant. I think if I was going to set up something using a headless CMS, I would integrate it with a project like React Static. When a user publishes something in the CMS, it would trigger a build of the generator that would result in putting some files out in S3 or something equivalent.

That way if you see a traffic spike or a DDoS attack, it's directed only towards static files on S3 and you can let Amazon take care of it. I don't want to be too critical of how people have things set up because I'm sure they have their reasons, but that said I don't think a page request on your site should map directly to an API request to the CMS.

Ideally, a spike in traffic to your site shouldn't result in taking down your CMS. That's why static site generators are so popular.

As long as we acknowledge that large classes with large methods can also cause problems. Dealt with that before and it is not fun by any means. The worst offenders, though, are the projects that have a LOT of large classes with large methods, plus some crazy abstraction thrown in like a dash of pepper.

More rigor is definitely required, but it may not be possible to formally verify AI driven code to the same extent. Aviation software is driven from formal requirements, has a strict set of coding rules, and the generated assembly code is compared to the original source code. Within the coding rules, the software isn't even allowed to dynamically allocate memory.

I have no idea how you'd build an AI system with those constraints, given that the computer essentially programmed the model itself by learning.

Humans can't properly detect the most vulnerable users in all conditions. Not an excuse for this system failing to perform, but all self-driving cars have to do is be a little bit better for net safety to improve. People are notoriously unreliable. Computers don't get drunk or sleepy, for instance.

I'd argue that it's not just PayPal though, although they've played a part for sure. Credit cards in the US are ubiquitous and offer a very high level of fraud protection that consumers are used to.

Of course, that fraud protection (and the multiple points & cash back systems) are all covered by overhead in the system. Merchant fees are quite expensive, although the consumer never usually sees them except for small things like cash discounts or minimum transaction amounts at small businesses. There have been some interesting court cases about the ability for merchants to pass those fees onto their customers.

Again, I think the problem is bad devs that will apply for any job regardless of your stated values.

By gender, she's referring to gender identity which is certainly not binary. There is a pretty high correlation between someone's chromosomes, "equipment", and gender identity but it's not 100% and any of those can vary on a spectrum.

I've been doing some reading on transgender individuals, and the current knowledge is that gender identity has some kind of durable biological basis, we just don't know quite what it is yet. It's not simply a delusion and a refusal to accept your "real biological gender" based on your chromosomes, etc. Some people don't identify as either gender.

And like the other poster mentioned, there are genetic outliers like XXY chromosomes (intersex), and other things that can happen such as Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (XY females due to lack of response to testosterone).

I do see your point as well. It's a very tough balance to sort out. But I don't think it's clear cut since some speech essentially _is_ a harmful action. For instance, consider a potential law that would actively discriminate against a group (think segregation, bathroom bill, whatever). Advocating for the passage of the law essentially is "just speech" but it then leads to the passage of the law. Once the law is passed the harmful action takes place, but it's too late to counter it.

So I don't think it's quite as simple as protecting people's feelings over all else. Frankly, I even have mixed feelings and unease about the fact that I think limiting speech is warranted sometimes. But there it is.

Here is the section from the memo that I'm referencing:

Philosophically, I don’t think we should do arbitrary social engineering of tech just to make it appealing to equal portions of both men and women. For each of these changes, we need principled reasons for why it helps Google; that is, we should be optimizing for Google—with Google’s diversity being a component of that. For example currently those trying to work extra hours or take extra stress will inevitably get ahead and if we try to change that too much, it may have disastrous consequences. Also, when considering the costs and benefits, we should keep in mind that Google’s funding is finite so its allocation is more zero-sum than is generally acknowledged.

In general I agree that a rational analysis and science based approach is valuable. In fact, I think research into diversity actually does support the idea that it provides benefits. But it's not simply as black and white as science good, empathy/moralizing bad.

For instance, it may be objectively better for a company to do a lot of things that we consider immoral or harmful to society. For instance, how much does maternity and paternity leave cost a company in productivity, time, and the expense of providing a replacement worker? In fact, it might just be more profitable not to hire women of childbearing age at all, which actually was socially accepted for a long time. But these days our society has come to the general conclusion that this is actually morally unacceptable, and the benefits to parents and society outweigh the costs to the company. A very similar argument could be employed regarding the hiring of employees in the reserves or national guard.

I think you have to look at things holistically, as an entire system, and yes, morally.

I generally agree, but there is a line. See my comment above for a longer take on that.

Words and actions are inextricably linked in complicated ways. I don't know anything about who you are or your situation, but I will say that the "sticks and stones" attitude is much easier to believe in if you've never been in a minority group. I used to buy into it, in fact, until a big bag of empathy hit me like a truck as I got older.

Even the conservatives and alt-righters admin this, which is why they're so upset about people using politically correct language, even by their own free choice. "Happy Holidays" anyone?

I, for one, would find it pretty disadvantageous in my studies to attend classes at an institution that endorses (even silently) a viewpoint that questions my right to the pursuit of happiness, to marry who I want, to be the correct gender, or even to exist. Organizations can and do limit that speech in certain environments that they are responsible for.

That said, the first amendment is hugely important, but limited in scope in the consequences that it protects you from.

Of course, it _is_ important to not simply refuse to hear or allow speech that you disagree with. There is a balance to be struck there.

I'm not convinced. His repeated use of the words "echo chamber" seems fairly indicative of his views, and I don't think it simply leans conservative. This is all just conjecture though.

But either way, if he didn't take the money and went public it would turn out worse for Google, possibly even legally. They really took the only action they could, in my opinion.

I actually find that highly unlikely. Look how fast Damore has been involved with the conservative media. That aside, if he was really convicted in his opinion, do you think he would take the money?

I don't think they necessarily can, in the interest of fostering a welcoming and safe environment for students to learn. Example: "Let's not be scared of having an open, honest, and frank discussion of how Jews have caused the decline of the country."

Do you see how ridiculous that sounds and why a university could not in good faith legitimize the proponents of that theory? Now I'm not saying all issues are as black and white as that, but it's clear to me that there is a line that needs to be drawn somewhere. Any particular issue probably has differing opinions on whether it crosses the lines. But anything that is abusive towards women, minorities, trans people, etc. as people is dangerous ground and I can't argue with not supporting that.

Where is the evidence that any of these biological differences actually do cause women to choose tech careers less? Sure there are links to studies about the differences themselves, but that's it. And in fact, if you look at the changing makeup of Com Sci majors and programmers over the last 60 years, it seems to be a slight possibility at best and disingenuous at the worst.

Actually, if you read it closely, this is not true. True, he does suggest a lot of potential actions that could create a more beneficial tech culture for women, but then he goes on to suggest that Google needs to determine if these types of changes would impact Google's productivity in a negative way.

This is a pretty heavy implication that these programs do not in fact have any value and that diversity is not valuable. I can agree that a perfect 50/50 split is unattainable and the wrong goal, but there are studies that show diversity confers an advantage. And as Yonatan points out, I think the author has a misunderstanding of what is valuable from an engineering culture perspective.

how do you know that you won't be the one sacrificed in the name of diversity?

Well, you don't. Just like you don't know whether you will be one of the ones to get rejected from a Google interview that has famously high false negative rates. It's an unfortunate fact of life.

There are studies that show diverse teams have advantages. Some of them are linked in this article: https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter