HN user

st1x7

2,324 karma
Posts10
Comments392
View on HN

This is just science fiction. To mention "recent developments" in the introduction is somewhat misleading considering how far the current state of technology is from their hypothetical superintelligence.

We don't have superintelligence, we don't have the remote idea of how to get started on creating it, in all likelihood we don't even have the correct hardware for it or any idea what the correct hardware would look like. We also don't know whether it's achievable at all.

I hear far more complaints about how difficult it is to find good people from companies hiring for mainstream languages than from those using more niche stuff

Of course, there is just more of them in the first place. The other effects that you describe might also be true but keep in mind what the base rates are.

It's really a strength, not a quirk. Negative indexing and array slicing in general are great in Python. Really easy to pick up and way more convenient than any other language that I've come across.

and those insights are transferable to your daily work

Some people say this, others say that it makes your daily work worse because going back to a language that isn't on the cult-approved list is so difficult.

problems in finance, energy, medicine, etc., that are more correctness-sensitive than performance-sensitive

What does correctness-sensitivity mean in this context and how is it missing from a language like Python for example?

It's the company's responsibility to manage effort, staff levels, timelines and overtime compensation. So when you say that it takes more than 9-5, what I hear is that they need more staff, longer time frames for delivery, or to pay higher rates for overtime but instead they're extracting the additional cost for free out of naive 20-something-year-olds who have been brainwashed to think that "being passionate" = working for free.

There is a very strong sense in which whole "asking your manager" thing is a mere formality—it's very unlikely to be declined if the title you're asking for is remotely appropriate (and, to be honest, often even if it isn't.)

That's interesting, I really didn't think that it's that common. In many companies this ranges from very difficult to completely impossible and certainly isn't just a formality. I guess that we have just been exposed to very different types of company/management.

What is the most efficient way to learn the minimum viable amount of statistics?

You need to add 3 constraints to the question

1. What is your starting point and current knowledge of mathematics and statistics?

2. Minimum viable for what? What do you need the statistics knowledge for?

3. How much effort can you afford to put into this over what period of time?

Then the answer ranges from "here are a couple of good youtube videos" to "here is how to design your own degree in statistics using freely available material".

I want to know what was the decision process at the moment when you first decided to start using the word "senior" on your own resume.

...they thought I should be using the S word!

The question suggests that you can somehow give yourself a new title which usually isn't true for people who work for someone else. Hopefully the titles that you put on your resume are your actual titles at the companies that you worked for, not something you came up with. Don't worry about calling yourself anything.

At the same time if you are able to get a promotion or apply for a senior role, that's great - go for it. It's nice that people around you are recognising your progress in some way.

Last thing, titles have meaning within any given company but are almost useless when comparing across companies. In some places to get a senior developer title, you just need to ask. Your manager then tells HR to change one cell in a spreadsheet and congrats - you're a senior software engineer. In other places you can become senior if you've been on a team for a year and everyone else has been there for a couple of months ("you have multiples of their experience, of course we can call you a senior engineer"). In those places you just need to be senior relative to the people around you. And in other companies it's a much more rigourous process with very specific criteria. There are people will decades of impressive high-profile engineering work at big companies whose title is just "Senior Software Engineer".