wgerard

I think it includes transfers and express lines. I noticed if I click on a local stop that meets an express line somewhere, the express line stops are still quite a bit darker than other stops.

That's likely why 18th and 14th street are so similar: It only takes a minute or two to get from 18th st -> 14th st.

For me, the nice part about Obsidian is that they're just markdown files. So even if something happens to Obsidian, the notes still exist and are still easily transferrable to something else.

I was part of Techstars Seattle in 2019, though we were mentored by Chris's counterpart at Founders' Co-op (Aviel). It was also a partnership with Amazon, and I really don't have enough good things to say about that experience even though our company ceased to exist less than a year later.

I'm only half-surprised.

I had a great experience, we learned a ton, and if anything was going to set us up for success it was our time there. Companies are mostly doomed to fail, but our time in Seattle was pretty transformative for me personally. It allowed us to refine our focus and dedicate ourselves wholly to building something people wanted (which, turns out, wasn't that many people obviously). The support and guidance we received from Aviel, our Amazon partners, and fellow cohort members were unparalleled. Say what you want about VCs or Amazon or startup founders (and yeah there are many things to be said), but I really have nothing but great things to say about all of the individuals from our time there. Admittedly, my opinion doesn't carry any particular importance.

On the other hand, I'm not surprised at all when I reflect on the actual Techstars program. Techstars, as an organization, seemed totally in the periphery for much of the program. The lion's share of valuable advice and resources came not from the organization itself, but from everyone else.

Echoing another's sentiments, the value of Techstars seems heavily influenced by location and the mentors involved. We were lucky to only be thinking about two great programs, Seattle and NYC. If we had ended up somewhere else maybe I'd be completely unsurprised.

Side note: If anyone is interested in this space, highly recommend you check out https://www.woventeams.com/

Hah, this is something close to my heart.

A friend and I tried to start a company around this, basically resolving three big issues we saw with take-homes:

1) No feedback. If you spend a couple hours on something you should get meaningful feedback.

2) No clear criteria. Is the hiring company going to slam you on correct syntax? If so, you should know that upfront!

3) Time guidelines that had no enforcement and thus led to an arms race where candidates would spend ever-increasing amounts of time and skew the standard of what "good" is.

So we fixed those things:

1) We provided the feedback, not the hiring companies, so legal liability was non-existent for the hiring companies. We double-blinded the process as much as we could (evaluators didn't know who the candidate was and vice-versa).

2) We told candidates upfront what they'd be evaluated on. Not down to the level of "you must implement this problem using a max heap", but we would say something along the lines of "The company is looking for an academic algorithmic solution to this problem" or similar. We would then only allow evaluators to evaluate them on these axes and nothing else.

3) We also strictly enforced time limits by basically telling candidates "hey you'll have 2 hours to submit from the time you hit start and see the prompt, so please make sure you have two hours from when you hit start." -- not ideal, obviously, but the best we could come up with to resolve #3 above.

As you can probably imagine, the market just wasn't really there for this. I think candidates generally enjoyed it in comparison to the vague, unending slog that most take-homes are but:

1) The value prop just wasn't really there for most companies: They mostly use these types of evaluations on more junior candidates, and unfortunately the hiring market for junior candidates is highly skewed towards the employer.

2) More surprisingly, we realized the time their current engineers and managers spent evaluating these takehomes just wasn't really a consideration for them. We tried to frame it in terms of "here's how much it costs you to evaluate these take-homes wrt time spent vs. us", but it was a difficult sell regardless.

We actually had the most success evaluating candidates from more non-traditional backgrounds upfront ourselves and then charging a placement fee if they were hired, but we ultimately didn't really want to continue that.

Hah, that’s funny because the German netflix series are some of my favorites!

Dark, Babylon, How to sell drugs online, and 1899 (RIP) are all fantastic series.

Heh I vaguely recall at Etsy, predating my time, that a significant amount of business logic was done using stored procedures and triggers.

They migrated away from it at some point, but some of the people who handled that migration were still around when I was there. Didn’t sound fun at all, sounded like a horrific nightmare.

Does it matter that they don't?

For an e-commerce platform that allows returns: Yeah that's kind of an important sticking point and was a big part of the problem.

The other problem was that spells were effectively a service and you can imagine that we didn't want to get involved in determining the validity or accuracy of services being performed virtually that had zero tangible artifacts.

What if I were to ship a complete spell in a bottle to the person?

This is probably what people actually do now to get around it, since there's an actual item being sold now.

I mean sure, I think that's why it flew under the radar for so long. The dark underbelly of it was people buying love spells and the like, which starts to feel a lot like preying on peoples' desperation.

This was a constant complaint about Etsy 10 years ago when I worked there. This was a complaint that predated my time working there, even. At one point we even had to ban people selling spells (yes, as in the seller would offer to do a magical incantation on your behalf).

The exact details might've changed, but the symptoms look the exact same. I remember we had to deal with a lot of people trying to skirt OFAC regulations, for example, by doing all sorts of things to hide the country of origin for something.

Optimistically I will say this is a very hard problem to solve. Pessimistically of course the company benefits from it, so I'm sure it's not a problem anyone besides maybe a few diehard advocates look too deeply into.

My personal addition: Code isolation

I've "prematurely" split up code across multiple/classes functions so many times before these huge god functions became set-in-stone and unwieldy.

I had a co-worker once who was extremely heavy on YAGNI--and I don't mean that as a pejorative, it was a really helpful check against code solving non-existent problems. They once called me out on a refactor I'd done surreptitiously for a payments flow to split payment states into multiple classes. Serendipity had struck, and I was able to point to a submitted (but not accepted) diff that would've broken the entire payments flow (as opposed to just breaking one state of the flow).

I always think about that every time I question whether I'm isolating code prematurely.

This whole story is wild to me, having worked previously at a different company which was also a frequent target of criticism on the blog run by the victims.

Sure, we definitely used to eye-roll at some articles. But my ass would've been fired in 5 seconds for even sending them an email, let alone anything beyond that.

My guess, though it carries a bunch of other problems that people below listed:

Population density means zip codes are extremely concentrated in NYC, especially in Manhattan. Traveling down the length of Manhattan might have you cover ~25 zip codes in 13 miles. Basically, a zip code isn't a meaningful measure of distance like it might be elsewhere. A radius might also place you into NJ, which could be an issue depending on what you're trying to accomplish: Delivering something from Queens might be significantly easier than from NJ, even though Queens might be further.

That's my guess anyway, though it's odd because nowadays generally looking something up via zip code + radius is actually easier in Manhattan (with a map you can easily see whether it would require coming from Jersey, crossing the park, etc. etc.)

Yeah, it was quite a trip to read this article as a former Etsian (for context to unaware readers: Etsy was a somewhat frequent target of the blog in question here, along with obviously eBay).

I'm not going to pretend we didn't roll our eyes from time-to-time when a new article came out that seemed exaggerated, but the thought of retaliation never crossed anyone's mind.

I'm pretty sure we would've been summarily fired if we had even made contact with Ina, let alone any of the psycho shit outlined here.

Interesting! TIL.

I think the reason for the speculation it’s wash trading is that unlike the 1952 Mickey Mantle card, there are presumably a lot more Mario 64 cartridges in circulation and thus the auction price seems out of line for the supply available.

Doing a cursory google search, I can see most used cartridges going for ~$25-40. Is an unopened cartridge worth many more orders of magnitude? Possibly, but it at least raises a lot of eyebrows that there’s something else at play.

EDIT: An analogous collectible is probably more something like a black lotus card, which as far as I can tell has “only” procured 500K at auction for a flawless one, and as far as I can tell inferior versions cost an order of magnitude less (10K or so) but nothing near to the spread here.

I read an interesting explanation on reddit somewhere that posited this is the result of a small group of devoted enthusiasts basically wash trading: They sell the games to each other back and forth for extremely high prices to make it seem like there's an insane amount of demand for them, in order to make that a self-fulling prophecy.

Whether that's true or not I have no idea, but it's certainly plausible.

red flags are n=1000

It's been awhile since I've taken stats, but people semi-frequently overestimate the necessary sample size needed for even a 99% confidence level.

Depends on the standard deviation for sure, but some quick napkin math suggests that a sample size of ~700 people is more than enough to draw inferences about the entire western hemisphere at a 99% confidence level.

The competitors to RTSes, games like League of Legends, Fortnite, Rocket League, and Hearthstone... are enjoyable to play across the full spectrum of skill levels.

<citation needed>

I'm mostly kidding, but I do think it's worth pointing out that most (if not all) of those games have been accused of being extremely unfriendly to new players and generally being miserable experiences until you acquire a baseline level of knowledge.

I think the more important part of those games you listed is that they're designed around team play (and thus friend groups), with the obvious exception of Hearthstone (which compensates for the burden of knowledge by having a lot of randomness and a VERY forgiving ladder at the low end).

Getting destroyed in League is fun if you're playing with friends; with strangers it usually just results in a lot of angry messages.

it is a pretty terrible game to play if you just want to unwind after work.

I think this is really the crux of why games that encourage team play will always win out: It's fun to play with friends, win or lose. SC2 tried this a bit, but at least when I used to play it was very clear that the game was completely unbalanced around team play.

Most of these games, if you want to really succeed, are mentally taxing. You have to pay attention to a minimap, you have to constantly be on the lookout for other people, you have to remember exactly what cards they've played so far.

If you can't counterbalance that with at least some socialization and lightheartedness, it's just work.

It's interesting you say that. I don't know if it's still the case, but Hearthstone used to have a decent amount of random effects (other than just basic card draw RNG). A big complaint at the time was that the randomness felt really awful if you were on the receiving end of an opponent's good luck.

Sometimes it felt like a chess match where you had executed your strategy perfectly, but randomly three of your opponents pawns turned into queens.

I get that you're talking about something more subtle than that (and maybe more akin to just, well, card draw RNG) but it's a delicate balance because it can also feel really bad for players being on the receiving end of randomness.

Eh, I'd say the campaign of WC3 was a pretty big focus, or at least Blizzard clearly considered it one since it formed the basis for a lot of WoW's storyline.

Yeah, I mean of course that’s a possibility. I looked it up, and apparently Steve Carrell wrote the episode in question. It’s not too wild to imagine that he used the opportunity to present his own character as more than just a bumbling oaf.

But then again, Michael having an inconsistently high emotional IQ is a recurring theme. When he’s in “sales mode”, he’s really good at making an emotional connection with people and making them feel like they’re buying from a friend.

I dunno. It’s an interesting conundrum the series presents and obviously doesn’t dig into too deeply since it’s a sitcom. Michael is sometimes unnaturally attuned to someone’s feelings and other times extremely oblivious to them.

That shows he's learned from a few mistakes

Honestly, that’s pretty out of character for Michael Scott. For a character who otherwise repeatedly makes the same mistakes over and over again, to show even that tiny bit of insight is a pretty big plot twist that maybe he’s not completely the bumbling oaf he lets on.

I’m not saying he’s secretly a Machiavellian genius, but his stupid antics belie what seems to be a pretty high emotional IQ at times (in sales and management, at least).

Hmm, I think the idea is a bit reductionist but given that his definitions stem from those characters I don't think you've chosen great examples.

Ryan, Jan, and later Kelly are definitely "sociopaths" by the article's definition (if not by, well, psychological standards).

Jo (Kathy Bates) straight up says her primary reason for getting married was to attain wealth and power.

David Wallace is seemingly very nice, but the articles explain how he repeatedly sets up "heads i win (and you get a kudos), tails you lose" scenarios. Robert California does this as well, and often in a much more obvious manner.

Michael Scott is his epitome of "clueless", who will never advance past middle management (and we see this play out several times). You can call it the Peter Principle too, if you want. You can throw Andy and Dwight in there too. None of them has the stomach to truly put themselves above everyone else (not even Dwight).

I'm not sure if there are other episodes, but there's a big hint in an episode in season 4 that Michael is much more astute than he lets on:

During the episode where Michael goes out to do a "survival show" in the woods (ala Bear Grylls). Jim is the temporary manager while Michael is gone, and he tries to combine several staff birthdays which are close together into one big celebration. It backfires terribly.

When Michael returns and Jim expresses his relief, Michael explains that he made the same mistake Jim did once and explains that the decision to celebrate the close birthdays separately is a very deliberate one. He also implies that Jim is very much on the same trajectory as him.

He then makes a "That's what she said" joke randomly, and Jim basically replies "Uh, what?" and Michael explains that he makes dumb jokes often to just break the tension.

It's a pretty lucid moment for an otherwise often opaque character, but does imply that Michael's quirks are a result of his staff and not in spite of them.

This is going off on a tangent obviously compared to the OP's point (that the legal system doesn't try to control for subjective behavior, which is incorrect), but sure, I'll indulge.

That doesn't mean it's a good thing.

I don't think this is a popular position, or even a necessarily logical one. There are a great deal of "I'm not touching you" type behaviors that society collectively despises and often falls under these catch-all categories.

Legal doctrine is rife with "reasonable person" standards as a result that would be impossible to codify thoroughly and properly. Obviously, the mythical "reasonable person" doesn't exist and is often a judge or jury left to subjectively decide.

For example, harassment laws sometimes rely on a "credible threat of violence" based on something that would "make a reasonable person afraid for their safety". Good luck enumerating all the possible definitions of that.

For exactly the reason this article is being discussed: Without a code of conduct you're left with an arbitrary line about what "being a jerk" is.

Codifying rules is meant to prevent that from happening, even though as we see it doesn't always work that way.

should CoCs even try to transcend the law

Yes? Companies do this all the time with codes of conduct and nobody really thinks twice about it.

Nobody would think it's bizarre that (hypothetically, I don't know what their actual rules are) Coca-Cola has a rule barring employees from wearing a "Pepsi > Coke" shirt to client meetings.

where we try to legislate for things that are in many cases subjective?

We do this all the time, even in our actual legal system.

"Disturbing the Peace" is one example off the top of my head of something that's incredibly subjective that we consider the purview of the legal system.

All of which require time and dedication to the craft to get good at.

I don't mean to be cynical about it, but I think you're looking at this through rose-tinted nostalgia glasses. There are plenty of examples of famous entertainment personalities both present and historical that don't exactly espouse "dedication to the craft".

Not to the throw anyone under the bus in particular, but the entire "pop punk" wave of the early 2000s wasn't really about exceptional music talent as much as it was about selling an image. I think we can all also name an actor/actress or two (or five) whose primary qualifications seem to be family connections or, well, being exceptionally attractive.

And that's not anything new, obviously. I mean hell, they made a whole movie about it back in the day: "Singing in the Rain". Ghostwriters for songs have been a thing since, I dunno, at least the 60s (and probably much longer, I'm just thinking of Carole King in particular and how she got her start).

Being a internet celebrity (in the sense of being Instagram famous), while something that needs to be worked on to get there, does not in most cases involve as much work and creativity.

I think you're vastly underselling how much work it is to be an internet celebrity. Twitch streamers often talk about the fact that even a three day vacation sets them back considerably in terms of viewership. Differentiating yourself in a sea of sameness is creativity. Public sentiment is extremely fickle and difficult to tame.

Ultimately internet celebrities are just entertainment personalities. If you want to dismiss entertainment personalities in general that's fine, but the idea of an entertainment personality certainly isn't anything new.

Yes, I think this is the other side of being a kid :).

There'd certainly be a lot more paleontologists and crane operators if we followed our passions as children to fruition.