throwawaystress

I’m so glad you mentioned the vertical taskbars being taken away. There’s a feedback item on Microsoft’s forums that’s years old now and they still haven’t addressed it. It seems so weird that they took away this functionality that they’d had implemented for years, seemingly for no reason.

I like the thought, but I don’t think that logic holds generally. I can’t just declare I am someone (or represent someone) without some kind of evidence. If someone just accepted my statement without proof, they wouldn’t have done their due diligence.

Simon Willison’s blog: https://simonwillison.net/.

How the heck does he have time to post all that amazing stuff, AND be coding open-source, AND have some kind of day job?

My god, I wish I were that productive.

The smaller the subpopulation, the higher the variance, and the less significant the result.

They just copied in the bullets from the article to save us a click :)

Wow, that’s an unnecessarily harsh criticism. The OP spent a lot of time coding this up, it’s still in progress, and they should feel proud of it! Anki isn’t for everybody, and maybe this person made a UI that speaks to some people better than others. I count myself among the camp of people who like SRS but dislike Anki.

I guess the reason I want a FAANG job is the career security that comes with knowing that other companies will give me a second look because I have them on my resume. And of course, it feels bad when friends are able to do it and I can’t :(

Thanks! How do you recommend prioritizing that experience? I think my resume looks pretty good, but maybe it needs work. It goes: Short profile > skills > education (including coursework) > work experience. I put the education bit before work experience because I just graduated. I also included a link to my GitHub.

I’m also a Fastmail user (for the past 5 years or so), but I’m considering switching to iCloud, given the announcement it’ll start supporting custom domains. Fastmail is pricey ($50/month for the non-lite tier), whereas iCloud is $1/month for 50 GB.

I feel the same way! I don’t know how to get work done when there are so many meetings and random events, and yet my employer expects us to get it all done within 40 hours (and will be concerned if you can’t).

Can you elaborate on how you learned to be that effective? I’d much rather work less, but I find I can’t get work done in 40 hours, and my coworkers doing the same work can. I often need to put in some extra hours here and there.

Does that work with data science work, though? Along the way you build many models and many kinds of ad hoc analyses that can build up. I’ve yet to see someone write tests. For the most part, I’ve only seen people write big long scripts that they call, setting some global constants at the top. I’m aspiring to be better than that, but it seems counter to the goal of getting results quickly.

Thanks :)

Whoa! You’re going to finish all seven (six?) of those books over the next month? Just on nights and weekends? How are you so productive? How do you not burn out, given that (I assume) you do software during the day? Honest question, from someone who is often down on themselves for being a slow coder, slow reader, and easily burned out.

"Puritanical" is definitely meant to imply unhealthy, which is why it's got such a negative connotation. I think even in your example, you substitute "wasted" productivity (in the sense of going beyond contractual obligations) with other productivity, albeit towards another direction. I think that's what the parent's post is pointing out: this obsession/compulsion with filling in all time with productivity. Why can't time just be "wasted"?

What if I don't feel like I really have 10 years experience, but rather, 5 times 2 years' experience? It might be my self-confidence, but when I hear someone has 10 years' experience, I think of someone much more competent and experienced than me.

Thanks, this is helpful, especially about the list part. Is the ageism stuff really not true? Even if you want to work for Microsoft or Google, albeit not in Silicon Valley? I get the sense people won't take me seriously if I'm starting in a junior role at 30+ years old. I'm sure there's a lot of my own self-esteem and projection going on in there, but I definitely feel incompetent.

Thanks for that reminder. I really value employers who are willing to give you a chance.

Thanks so much for the perspective. I really appreciate it.

What's your perspective on this: it seems like the field has exploded in the past 10 years. As I've been programming for a long time, and following tech blogs/etc, it seems like 20 years ago, you could do well learning Java and maybe one or two other things and you'd be set. Nowadays, it seems that's not enough.

This is good advice. Thank you!

Thank you. The superheroes line is brilliant, I'll keep that one in mind.

Regarding salary, I think I didn't choose my employers well. I live in a large northeastern metropolitan area, and people with my comparable skills make upwards of $100k (in fact, someone who was interviewing to be my replacement when I left my old job wanted twice what I was making).