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Walmart Labs started out as strictly R&D, but since it was perceived as more prestigious than plain old Walmart eCommerce, they moved teams under the las umbrella in lieu of paying them more. That didn't work out so well, but there's no going back from something like that.
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# ? Feb 7, 2021 16:22 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 15:35 |
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Coco13 posted:3. Odds are the people in the lab didn't get into their field of research to get really good at coding. You make their lives easier and they will take a bullet for you. I'm an analyst in health care, and it does not get old being told "I've heard you're the guy" by total strangers because I created a way they can do their jobs painlessly. I was the software guy in an academic lab that needed a software guy and it was an absolute blast, and I wanted to echo this because it was my biggest mistake there. None of the people I worked with really cared about the programming they did (it was just a chore they had to do to publish) and I was new enough in my career that I figured my job was to “set standards” or some bullshit instead of helping them do their jobs. It still went well but it could have gone even better! Also, yeah soft money is a big reason I left.
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# ? Feb 7, 2021 16:47 |
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Twerk from Home posted:I'm struggling with an interesting opportunity, and curious if i would ruin my future career options. I started my career in an academic lab and spent the better part of a decade there. It was interesting work, and I mean you can’t deny getting to work on curing cancer is good and noble. We had similar fun toys, like 15-20PB of disk online and a 5000 core cluster, back in 2012. Because of the nature of “do research, publish paper, do next thing” it was a constant struggle between PIs wanting to do things on a purely ad hoc basis, versus me and the software people trying to build some frameworks so we’re not constantly throwing stuff together. It was a tough needle to thread. I found limited options for advancement. I saw one or two people get told “if you got a masters degree you’ll get more money/responsibility,” only to peace out to industry with their fresh MS degree because the lab didn’t hold up their end of the bargain. I was basically told I hit the wall there career-wise unless I had a PhD, and the catch-22 there was while that would mean advancement, it’d also be less money than being a pure software person. We were also at the mercy of grants. We were funded by several layers of multi-year grants that started/ended different years so there was always either a new pile of money or a grant falling off. Sometimes there were good years, and then there were times like those three years in a row we had a big multi-year grant expire without replacement and had to lay people off. I’ve still got friends working there who don’t care about all that, it’s an interesting problem to solve, and they’re okay with the money. The low money comes with the benefits of not getting paged with P1s, not having external customers, a generally heavier emphasis on open source software, and getting to play with cool toys.
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# ? Feb 7, 2021 17:49 |
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Twerk from Home posted:I'm struggling with an interesting opportunity, and curious if i would ruin my future career options. There's a lot to be said about salary being a huge thing but I ended up taking a $5k paycut to leave my last job for a place that's quite boring and tedious, but it's a much nicer working environment. I think about it this way, overall: above a certain salary, more money is great, but other benefits can override. It's just a matter of finding that salary point for you. Academia can be extremely cutthroat, though, and nothing is going to really prepare you for the sheer brutality they can inflict on each other and you -- people talk about academia as a coddling environment but in my experience private industry is so much more friendly and collegial, and I was in a comparatively healthy environment in academia.
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# ? Feb 7, 2021 20:24 |
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The brutality of academia varies a lot of from field to field, from department to department, and from lab to lab. But it can get bad in a way that few other sectors can. As an employee of the university you have some protection from the worst of it, but that doesn't mean you're always safe.
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# ? Feb 7, 2021 20:34 |
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you can predict the brutality with a single feature: ratio of new grad phds vs open assistant professorship positions. i would actually go and actually calculate this ratio. cs isnt that bad, philosophy looks like mad max
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# ? Feb 7, 2021 20:40 |
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That won't tell you anything about a specific department or lab, and doesn't really matter that much for staff.
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# ? Feb 7, 2021 20:45 |
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individual labs no. but ive found its p good for individual departments. and if they have the position in hand the real question they wanna answer is how mad max-like it is
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# ? Feb 7, 2021 21:00 |
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Question: I'm in the midwest (Colorado) and having been here for the last few years, it seems like most job interviews are pretty laid back compared to the coasts. I usually have to do some sort of small take home project then answer some questions/general personality fit stuff and that's it. Never been asked any of the leetcode type questions. With everything becoming remote, I'm getting lots of messages from recruiters from places all over. What I'm wondering is, if a company is in SF or NYC or some other more intense place, will their interview questions for remote positions be on that NYC/SF/etc level, or do places generally adjust based on where they are interviewing? I've never had to really study all that leetcode stuff but wondering if it might not be the worst idea to start brushing up on it.
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 17:38 |
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Are you asking if companies put thought into their interview processes?
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 17:43 |
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changing the interview based on where the applicant is from would be more effort and potentially discriminatory, I wouldn't expect it
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 17:50 |
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You should expect to have a couple leet code style questions.
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 18:00 |
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The Dark Wind posted:I've never had to really study all that leetcode stuff but wondering if it might not be the worst idea to start brushing up on it. in my experience (ymmv) way too many companies ask you to do really asinine leetcode type challenges. it sucks. Cracking the Code Interview is good.
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 18:00 |
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We’ve expanded our candidate searches to include folks living out of state and everything about the interview is the same as with local candidates. Only difference in the process is compensation/benefits discussion (if candidate gets to that point). Benefits get weird across state lines (at least for small companies), and our particular problem is that we’re in a pretty low CoL city and we’ve been attracting remote candidates from some of the most expensive areas on the eastern seaboard, which makes our generous-for-rust-belt-but-pauper-level-for-the-likes-of-NYC salaries a harder sell.
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 18:24 |
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Queen Victorian posted:We’ve expanded our candidate searches to include folks living out of state and everything about the interview is the same as with local candidates. If candidates are living in a high CoL city, applying for jobs with companies outside of those areas, and getting surprised when the compensation is lower than what they'd expect, that's on them. However, there's something to be said for being upfront about what you can offer so you don't have to go through the whole interview process with people who will never take your offer.
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 18:34 |
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ultrafilter posted:If candidates are living in a high CoL city, applying for jobs with companies outside of those areas, and getting surprised when the compensation is lower than what they'd expect, that's on them. However, there's something to be said for being upfront about what you can offer so you don't have to go through the whole interview process with people who will never take your offer. I’m not privy to every stage of the interview (I’m just in technical screens and behavioral), but I think we’ve taken to giving out of town candidates a heads up about salary range potential. We had an offer rejected because even though we were able to meet raw salary expectation despite the higher CoL, it wasn’t enough convince the guy to switch sectors to our less sexy one. I’ll have to ask if relocation ever comes up. We’re currently 100% remote and will be for the foreseeable future so it’s technically pointless right now, but we’re keeping our office and plan to go back to it eventually (but with super flexible and generous WFH options remaining in place), and even during quarantine we’ve gotten lots of value out of most of us being within a couple miles of each other and the office - easy to go grab supplies/equipment, have (very) occasional socially distanced face to face meetings or picnics, exchange seedlings (we are dorks who like our victory gardens), etc.
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 19:14 |
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In a few weeks I'm leaving a Fortune 100 company to a company with <50 employees recently out of the startup phase. I worked at the Fortune 100 company for a decade and last year was promoted to architect. I'll be "software architect" at this new place, which seems like a proxy for "do whatever is needed" (in a good way, not a fix-the-printer way, hopefully) Anyone made a transition like this who can share stories or things to watch out for?
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 21:49 |
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Lord Of Texas posted:In a few weeks I'm leaving a Fortune 100 company to a company with <50 employees recently out of the startup phase. Startup life is very different. New projects, crazy ideas, room to try out new tech and architecture. Don't let them crunch you. Ever. No delivery deadline is worth the stress. Otherwise, have fun.
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 22:01 |
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heres the deal w new stuff in startupland: you get more room in practice and you will get large rewards technically from using as little of that room as you can. one or two secret weapons, is the byword poo poo is a lot faster tho
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 22:07 |
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Assume that the processes all are barely functional. Also watch out for engineers who know every line of code and feel a rightful sense of ownership over everything. They're likely going to have a hard time letting go of that, so be gentle and patient since they are really valuable to have around as the company scales.
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 23:01 |
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Be ready to fix the printers.
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 23:02 |
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Thanks all for the advice!ultrafilter posted:Be ready to fix the printers. Ha! Indeed. wins32767 posted:Assume that the processes all are barely functional. Also watch out for engineers who know every line of code and feel a rightful sense of ownership over everything. They're likely going to have a hard time letting go of that, so be gentle and patient since they are really valuable to have around as the company scales. Unfortunately one of the staff engineers who fits that description just announced that they are leaving. So that's going to hurt, but it seems like they are close-knit enough that some of that domain knowledge is shared. kayakyakr posted:Startup life is very different. New projects, crazy ideas, room to try out new tech and architecture. Yep. One of my hesitations is that they are an "unlimited PTO" company, and we all know what that means in practice. One of the bright sides is that their customer base is mostly government, so outside of custs in different timezones their availability needs off hours are pretty minimal. bob dobbs is dead posted:heres the deal w new stuff in startupland: you get more room in practice and you will get large rewards technically from using as little of that room as you can. one or two secret weapons, is the byword Yeah, prudence in which shiny new techs to chase will be something I need to exercise. I don't want their architecture to end up like one of my Factorio bases, after all.
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 23:14 |
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For whatever it's worth I have worked at two different unlimited PTO companies who just actually didn't track time off. Took a lot of long weekends and a few legitimate vacations along with several days around Xmas and Thanksgiving at both never had any trouble. I was probably lucky but it's not always a con (outside of the con where they aren't paying out unused vacation.)
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 23:19 |
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bob dobbs is dead posted:heres the deal w new stuff in startupland: you get more room in practice and you will get large rewards technically from using as little of that room as you can. one or two secret weapons, is the byword yeah, i left about 13 year of DoD contracting to move to a ~300 person company with a dev department of about 50 and the pace will take some getting used to, also the code, legacy or not is so much better and well organized than anything I saw in my entire time working as a gov contractor. also way more responsive if you request stuff, all of the dev were bitching about their laptops not having enough ram and within a month they ordered like 50 new laptops with twice the ram and updated CPUs and handed them out. also when the wfh thing started they basically said 'go take anything you need from your desk to work at home including your chair if you want' Lord Of Texas posted:Yep. One of my hesitations is that they are an "unlimited PTO" company, and we all know what that means in practice. I worked at a place like this, and basically what it meant was that you had to plan your vacation per quarter, but there was no real limit on what you could take (sick days, and poo poo coming up were obviously different)
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 23:33 |
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unlimited pto is bad compared to 6-8 weeks known pto. it is not bad compared to american-style 1 week and you get fired for takin it pto
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 23:43 |
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wins32767 posted:Assume that the processes all are barely functional. Question the ones that appear "functional" on the surface but are actually just grandfathered in by the vets and are lovely or not working for new hires. Call them out early or you'll be in for a nightmare ride. Can't say I'd be enthralled by working at a startup again but pay me enough and I'll work anywhere, a lot of jobs are garbage and you really, truly just cannot know to what extent until you work there or know someone (ideally 2-3 people) on the inside.
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 23:45 |
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Whenever you're learning a process as a newbie, ask if there's documentation. If there isn't, take notes, and those will become the documentation to help onboard future employees (and if there is documentation, note down any discrepancies and get them fixed). You don't really want to be the Bastion of Onboarding Knowledge, but on the other hand the org will be vastly improved by streamlining this stuff and it's a great way for you to start making an impact right out of the gate.
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 23:50 |
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Whenever you're learning a process as a newbie, ask if there's documentation. If there isn't, take notes, and those will become the documentation to help onboard future employees (and if there is documentation, note down any discrepancies and get them fixed). You don't really want to be the Bastion of Onboarding Knowledge, but on the other hand the org will be vastly improved by streamlining this stuff and it's a great way for you to start making an impact right out of the gate. This is true. Current company's onboarding was super improved by having a triple chunk of new hires, 3 each month, for 3 successive months. Went from a 5-6 day onboarding to a 1-2 hour by the time the 3rd group got their boxes.
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 23:54 |
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Whenever you're learning a process as a newbie, ask if there's documentation. If there isn't, take notes, and those will become the documentation to help onboard future employees (and if there is documentation, note down any discrepancies and get them fixed). You don't really want to be the Bastion of Onboarding Knowledge, but on the other hand the org will be vastly improved by streamlining this stuff and it's a great way for you to start making an impact right out of the gate. On one hand becoming the Bastion of Onboarding Knowledge sounds lovely but on the other hand you can get new hires up to speed so much quicker by investing time in docs and automating the process, and can then start delegating them actual interesting work. Helps people stay motivated to burn through the mundane as quick as possible and up to date documentation in any org of a decent size is invaluable.
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# ? Feb 10, 2021 23:59 |
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Whenever you're learning a process as a newbie, ask if there's documentation. If there isn't, take notes, and those will become the documentation to help onboard future employees (and if there is documentation, note down any discrepancies and get them fixed). You don't really want to be the Bastion of Onboarding Knowledge, but on the other hand the org will be vastly improved by streamlining this stuff and it's a great way for you to start making an impact right out of the gate. This was the exact onboarding process for a project that I worked on, don't know the answer search the wiki, still nothing? Find someone that can help you, it's up to you to add a new wiki page. Half of your first day was getting up to speed on editing wiki pages and the syntax and all. After like a 6-9 months almost everything was documented and when a new feature was added whoever developed it did the documentation out of habbit
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# ? Feb 11, 2021 00:04 |
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Lord Of Texas posted:In a few weeks I'm leaving a Fortune 100 company to a company with <50 employees recently out of the startup phase. figure out quickly what management actually expect from you. they'll tell you all kinds of things but you can figure out what they really want from the meetings they schedule and the questions they ask. your new job is to make them think their priorities are your priorities even if they are stupid and wrong. you'll have to make progress in actually important areas at the same time you're making progress in the ios app only the ceo uses or the billing dashboard the cfo won't shut up about
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# ? Feb 11, 2021 07:08 |
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the talent deficit posted:figure out quickly what management actually expect from you. they'll tell you all kinds of things but you can figure out what they really want from the meetings they schedule and the questions they ask. your new job is to make them think their priorities are your priorities even if they are stupid and wrong. you'll have to make progress in actually important areas at the same time you're making progress in the ios app only the ceo uses or the billing dashboard the cfo won't shut up about Yeah I'm really bad at this one. Contrarian by nature. Hopefully they value a dissenter? Great point about reading between the lines though. So many times people will say one thing and expect you to infer the other. TooMuchAbstraction posted:Whenever you're learning a process as a newbie, ask if there's documentation. If there isn't, take notes, and those will become the documentation to help onboard future employees (and if there is documentation, note down any discrepancies and get them fixed). You don't really want to be the Bastion of Onboarding Knowledge, but on the other hand the org will be vastly improved by streamlining this stuff and it's a great way for you to start making an impact right out of the gate. Yeah, they are hiring up really rapidly (have a large grant contingent on them adding X jobs in 2021) so this will be key. Good Will Hrunting posted:Question the ones that appear "functional" on the surface but are actually just grandfathered in by the vets and are lovely or not working for new hires. Call them out early or you'll be in for a nightmare ride. Yeah, I have a friend who I trust that works at the startup, he recommended it to me. That went a long way for my decision. bob dobbs is dead posted:unlimited pto is bad compared to 6-8 weeks known pto. it is not bad compared to american-style 1 week and you get fired for takin it pto True, but I came from a privileged position of 6-8 weeks guaranteed PTO (I'm US). Unlimited PTO is definitely a 1st world problem. I use most of my PTO to take random days off here and there if I feel like poo poo for whatever reason, rarely do I take long stretches of away time, so hopefully they're cool with that. Good to hear that several of you have had positive experiences with unlimited FTO policies. Everything I can tell about this place indicates to me that they are the "focus while at work, then disconnect" type, not the "work-everyone-to-the-bone" type. Not a ping-pong table to be found in their office which is a plus for me.
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# ? Feb 11, 2021 21:04 |
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Just had an interview at a company where I previously worked as a contractor. The project was a dumpster fire for several reasons and virtually everyone who worked on it no longer works at the company. When I asked about what happened, the 4 owners threw the employees under the bus and said they got rid of them because of their poor time estimation and planning skills. I know from side channels that at least one of the employees left for a better paying job. On the other hand, most of the people involved with the project were very bad at planning and time estimating. How much of a red flag is this? Two of the owners asked some moderately creepy questions about what I do in my free time and what my family life is like. I don't know if that's a bright red flag necessarily, but I certainly feel like my employers shouldn't care about anything that happens outside working hours. LLSix fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Feb 24, 2021 |
# ? Feb 24, 2021 16:59 |
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I'd be running like hell.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 17:13 |
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LLSix posted:Just had an interview at a company where I previously worked as a contractor. The project was a dumpster fire for several reasons and virtually everyone who worked on it no longer works at the company. When I asked about what happened, the 4 owners threw the employees under the bus and said they got rid of them because of their poor time estimation and planning skills. I know from side channels that at least one of the employees left for a better paying job. On the other hand, most of the people involved with the project were very bad at planning and time estimating. How much of a red flag is this? I would say this falls under the same idea that you should never talk bad about your past employers in an interview. They're throwing their past employees under the bus when trying to convince you that you should become an employee. If at their best they are like that, how will they behave at their worst? At the end of the day it depends how badly do you need the job.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 17:14 |
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Be glad that you haven't committed to anything yet, and get the hell out of there.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 18:07 |
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Their best image, the one they chose to present to you, is that when an employee has weaknesses (such as bad estimation skills), their resolution is to sack the entire team (discarding all that institutional knowledge) and try to hire new people instead of trying to improve those weaknesses. Even if you take all their words at face value they loving suck and you would prefer a job literally anywhere else
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# ? Feb 25, 2021 01:38 |
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Firing developers for bad estimation skills smells real bullshit. Estimates don't exist in a vacuum. Good estimates become bad estimates when provided with misleading, incomplete, or changing information, and naturally change as unknowns become knowns. On a dumpster fire project there tends to be a lot of unknowns to uncover. A project like that requires dedicated project management and requirements gathering before even touching code, and overworked developers can't also do project and requirements management on that scale unless you want it to take literally forever. Estimates are hard, will never be perfect, and carry a lot of assumptions. Managing that is as much of a business problem as an engineering problem. What I'm saying is don't go back to that place Guinness fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Feb 25, 2021 |
# ? Feb 25, 2021 02:07 |
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Hadlock fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Feb 25, 2021 |
# ? Feb 25, 2021 04:36 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 15:35 |
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I was asked about the centrifuge problem in an interview today. I hadn't heard of it before so I thought I'd mention it. This youtube video is what helped me parse the answer. Briefly, the question is, given a function that takes two numbers n and k. Can you place k tubes in n holes such that they're balanced. The version of the problem the interviewers used actually just asked if it was possible to balance the centrifuge, without specifying that all the tubes had to be used. I pointed out that you always have a balanced centrifuge with 0 tubes, (or two tubes for any even number of holes). They got a laugh out of that and then clarified that all k tubes had to be used. Edit: Got an offer from them while I was typing this up, so I must have done okay even though I didn't get the full solution. It's a one year hourly contract and pays the same as the full time position I mentioned just up thread, but I like the corporate culture a lot more. (Nobody got thrown under the bus during this interview). It's a lot more risk for me, but I think the better quality of life from not being disgusted by the managers is worth it.
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# ? Feb 25, 2021 19:48 |