rob_austin

that their internet connection isn't good enough

a person who wants to work remotely but doesn't figure out how to have a good internet connection, then they are not a good fit for remote work. If a person decides to travel to a location where internet connection is not good on the day of the interview, you can imagine what he/she will do when it's a regular work day.

Somebody shows up for a remote job and doesn't have a good internet connection is too big of a hiring risk to even both continuing the interview.

I'd love to read your essay!

My grandpa passed away recently and stuff he had spent over a million dollars over the years to accumulate over the years sold only for $30k. I realized that most of the value in selling a product in keeping it organized on a shelf, and marketing to consumers that you are a place where someone can buy a product of that type.

But your POV is more interesting.

I wholeheartedly agree with your comment about never being part of them. That experience is real and difficult and one that I experience as well with people from my own culture.

Having tried to make friends with people from many cultures I found my luck to be in the 10-20% range. Majority of people in every culture are only comfortable with people of their own culture. It can be hard to find the few people who are open to developing friendship with people of a different culture.

The worst part is consumers have also lost because of uber. The promise of convenient, affordable transportation will not be delivered. Uber/Lyft rides will be more expensive than cab rides were because users have to support Uber's overhead.

I don't feel bad if Uber takes a bigger hit. Earlier, I loved the potential of Uber to make transportation better but it hasn't materialized (for me at least). I had an "animal farm" feeling about Uber when I was trying to find a ride from the airport around midnight. They would match me, then cancel the ride and then match me to a ride at a higher rate. This went on for an hour and I eventually paid the same as I was paying for a cab before. At least with a cab, I could have reached home quicker. So as a consumer, I lost in every way. Yes, I hate the cab drivers and their behaviors but Uber wasn't any better for my particular situation.

I have also had similar experiences with UberPool. I was charged extra because the route was longer. It wasn't worth for me to complain about $10 but I stopped using UberPool later.

I have tried food delivery a couple of times and the extra cost was so expensive that I just didn't feel like it was worth it. I get that they need to charge a certain amount for the service to be sustainable/profitable. I didn't find it to be worth it.

They also played a lot of games with the Amex Platinum credits. So I closed the Amex Platinum card as well. It was not worth playing the games to save $15 a month.

I find that there is a lot of noise out there. You know the content with a lot of words but no message. Somebody has to create the "signal". You can create content with signal by working with people doing real work and stepping into the shoes of your customer. This is the job of so-called customer success people but they often don't have the opportunity to be in the shoes of the customer. I was a customer of B2B products (software and hardware) and I rarely found content that was meaningful. But there was a lot of problem solving in our internal daily meetings that could be used as content. But that material was not exposed to the sales/marketing people of the vendors. Some of that material was also something many companies would be unwilling to disclose. For example, companies are unwilling to admit that their product is not a good fit for so and so application. They continue their "messaging" as a product good for everything. The average sales and marketing person doesn't have enough context, knowledge or insight to understand that sales pitch doesn't work. I would find an occasional sales person who really understood the issues and would quickly develop a rapport with us and be successful in getting our business.

very astutely stated. I think many of us make fundamental attribution mistake - what can be attributed to ignorance/stupidity should not be attributed to malice.

I agree with you about the tools being in a data science course. What I'm pointing out is a lot of people have spent energy creating intro to programming courses but similar amount of effort has not been spent in creating intermediate courses that help people become proficient with the tools of data science. It's usually "intro" level content or library documentation.

I think writing code really helps you understand the algorithms in more depth so I'm all for exercises for LA like you suggest.

Some example topics that took me a lot of reading from different sources to understand.

- how to write a python library that you can host for public/private use

- adding test coverage to data science python projects

- learning libraries like matplotlib, seaborn beyond what you see in tutorials

I think material for all fo this exists in different sources like documentation/stack over flow but either it's too detailed or too superfluous. The middle (intermediate) layer is often missing.

At this point, I feel like there are too many "Intro to Python" courses floating around. It will take a newbie, multiple hours of reading reviews and recommendations to find a course. There are many good ones out there.

I wish there was more effort spent on creating intermediate courses. It would be great if there were more people trying to write books like this Nicolas Rougier is trying (https://github.com/rougier/scientific-visualization-book). Take a specific library and help people become proficient in them. Usually, the core contributors to a library are not always the best people to teach people how to use that library.

Airbnb needs to balance the pain between all three parties: host, guests, and Airbnb. Right now it is passing down all the pain to the hosts as Airbnb probably feels that there are more guests than hosts and the bad publicity from screwing hosts is less than screwing guests.

It will be interesting to see if Airbnb has the clout to force such policies down hosts' throat. Hosts will be upset but if Airbnb is their best way to monetize their property, they will be back on the platform.

Hosts should add a premium to their nightly rates to cover risk of such policies from Airbnb. But I doubt they will be able to do so in the near future as demand for travel goes down.

Would you mind sharing the name of the psychiatrist? I'm looking for one.

Agreed. I have been using Airbnb since 2010. I've had more bad experiences when using Airbnb compared to hotels. Earlier it used to be cheaper to stay in Airbnb, but not anymore. Their fees are outrageous and the quality of the accommodation has been wildly inconsistent.

I find it more stressful to stay at an airbnb.. lots of weird rules and policies to keep track of. Airbnb customer service is horrible when things go wrong.

The better Airbnb locations are managed by professional companies. Their prices tend to be high.

Nowadays, I consider staying in Airbnb only for a long trip with a lot of people when I can justify the time to thoroughly research the places. Otherwise, I prefer the consistent experience offered by Hilton/Hyatt/Marriott. Ironically it is relaxing for me to come back to the cookie cutter furnishings where I won't have to open 5 cabinets to find a coffee mug.