spacekitcat

That feels like a bold and possibly dangerous thing to say without evidence.

I think an important factor is how fast the team need you to hit the ground running.

Where there’s time for new developers to get up to speed with a new tech stack, I completely agree with you.

I think the biggest hurdle going from Java to C# is how you think about asynchronous code, more so for desktop software. My last role was C# with me coming from Java and I got a few rude awakenings.

From this day forward, I will refer to this sort of attack as a PiTM attack. Not much you can do to stop me I'm afraid.

So long as you expand the acronym in the first use, no one reasonable cares.

Eh, you don't get to control the language of others. If someone wants to say PitM, that's their business.

Yes, I feel a bit robbed by 90s computers when I pick up old manuals or cheap programming books for things like the BBC Micro.

I’m jealous that older generations get to say they wrote their first program on iconic hardware. Computers of my time were much faster, but they were very generic.

We do RFCs, I dislike the concept. It feels like an extension of this troubling trend of taking away autonomy from engineers.

Big brain comment here.

Listen, I know what I’ve experienced.

Edit: No actually, I can't understand what this is? You are trying to convince me my experiences are wrong. You don't seem to actually want to understand my point of view, so what is this? Why are you wasting both of our time like this?

Striving to build an environment where effort is made to attribute credit where it's due and to strive for equality of outcome for all is what we need to do. You're still picking the 'best person for the job' according to your own biases for what constitutes the 'best' (because how else could it work?), but you're also making an effort to ensure that your team/department/company isn't just all white (straight etc) men.

I think proponents of meritocracy are naive.

As a woman in tech, I feel that it isn't actually a meritocracy.

I think people have a habit of assuming men did the real work in a project, so they get a disproportionate share of the credit. People also have a habit of pushing women towards front end work, making the assumption that men are more 'technical' than women. It can be difficult to watch men get all of the credit for your blood, sweat and tears. It's especially bitter when they then say it's a meritocracy and you feel like saying 'what exactly did you contribute to this?'.

The concept of a meritocracy sounds nice on paper, but I think it ignores how humans work. The first issue is that I don't think we are especially good at identifying the best unless it's very easy to measure (sport for example). The second point is that it takes work to overcome your own biases and I think this feeds into how we evaluate 'the best' more than we like to admit.

While we're playing this silly, overly reductive logical fallacy bingo game, IMHO, your reply is a straw man.

The person you’re replying to didn’t say the article was wrong or try to discredit with an ad hominem attack, I interpreted as questioning if we really want to hear the opinions of someone so unsavoury and untrustworthy. It’s not to say his character invalidates his past research.

Oh, that’s an interesting tool. Thanks.

How do you establish that a binary is trustworthy?

I know what I do, I generally try to find user reviews, but someone had to install it first.

I found myself without a job a few years ago and I really needed a lifeboat. A job just sort of came to me on Linkedin with very little effort and while it wasn't the best, it was what I needed at the time.

It's worth having a Linkedin profile, but it's car crash of a social network.

I think there's a weird seam of irrational rage around the mere suggestion that tech isn't some utopian meritocracy.

I find it jarring.

I think we agree.

In principle, I see the point the author is making, but I can just picture my boss from a few jobs ago using this to justify IBM WebSphere and SVN.

I respect that she sacrificed her prestigious role to force Google to at least admit where they really stand.

Be specific, I don’t know what you mean.

So what I said then.

Just be specific about those ideas. I have no idea what those ideas are, I just see “Daily Mail”-esque rubbish.

I notice you don’t get specific. Is the vague language designed to obfuscate what you really mean?

Whatever helps you sleep at night, I guess.

Linux can be made to look okay I guess, I'd take it over Windows any day of the week and is always me preference on a server.

Don't get so defensive about it, I'm not trying to stop you choosing whatever gear you like. We're allowed to want different things.