Unlike the other code-slinging gods who walk amongst us in this thread, I prefer coding challenges because I'm pretty mid-level and average and I do actually need a job. And I hate whiteboarding. No one should do whiteboarding for code.
Agreed. Make me whiteboard or live-code if you wanna make me look and feel like I've not actually had over a dozen years of productive experience designing systems and shipping code and fixing other people's broken crap, and you'd love to watch me stress out and forget how to write a damn loop so you can complain on HN about how I was clearly lying about my experience & abilities and that's why you have to make people live-code or whiteboard. Challenges are, at least, preferable to that, for sure.
Whiteboarding is like coding except you don’t need to get the syntactical details of your loop right. It’s writing out your thoughts not just in pseudo code, but perhaps also in freehand visualizations. This makes it the most ergonomic and beginner friendly programming language ever.
Apple's iPhone also brought new UI/UX ideas and people that grow up with these phones/desktops now and judge everything by that standard vs. what was considered "working" way back when. Android and Microsoft helped too. This industry shifts fast, so it's really no surprise people come to hate the older stuff by looks alone.
As someone who wrote code for two mobile handsets for two different companies in the referenced time frame, I would say there was a noticeable lack of innovation in the handset business.
Except, perhaps, in Japan - where mobile handsets were way ahead in terms of design and features as compared with the U.S.
Which, I think, can also be explained by the fact that the handsets in Japan were marketed to the end users as opposed to the U.S. where the buyers were the network operators.
>I was removed from a company I founded (after Blizzard) for refusing to take a 2 million dollar kickback bribe to take an investment from China
Resisting that takes strength. $2m to take more money and keep quiet? I'd probably quit in shame or be fired eventually, but that's life-changing money.
I do wonder if we could take some amount of money from China and simply not give them what they ask for though when they start making demands, or giving them the run-around.
Well, from people who worked with him they said he was frequently absent and a bad leader. He is also blamed for much of their financial troubles for wanting to frequently change direction.
Additionally, the company took Chinese money 3 years prior to him being fired. Red 5 Studios was majority owned by The9 (a Chinese company) early 2010. Prior to being bought out they closed one office and fired about 30 people. So, I kinda doubt he was removed solely "for refusing to take an investment from china". Especially, when they were already owned by a Chinese company.
I was disappointed to find out that the ex-WOW developer in the title was Mark Kern. Sometimes the messenger can undermine the message. Reading his Twitter thread seemed like he is rewriting history. He took The9's money after spending the VC money (Benchmark, Sierra) he had raised originally and not being even close to releasing the game. I'm not sure who he refused a bribe from later (or maybe he meant that he refused to give a bribe to someone?), but he brought The9 to begin with.
The only reason the supply chain is at risk is because we dispose of a lot of electronics simply because there's a new version.
When the product lifecycle changes from 1 year to 10+ years, you'll find that people will just keep their stuff around longer and the demand on the supply chain goes way down.
Plus, there will be a shitload of data centers with capacity that will no longer be necessary (because of reduced devices making requests, segregated internet, less connectivity) in apocalyptic scenarios. Those can probably be re-purposed.
We haven't had to get clever about computer conservation because there's been so much supply.
PBS Space Time covered the idea a bit in a recent video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FshtPsOTCP4. They had some numbers but I don't think they referenced any formal research in that one.
I'm interviewing for the first time in years, totally forgot how degrading it is. For one company had 1 interview/week (each relatively short) for 4 weeks, passed the technical (my third interview) and then the 4th/final interview I was asked 95% the same questions that were asked in the 2nd interview. I gave the same answers. And then I was turned down.
At least you got an answer. I was searching (being picky) for almost a year. I got through numerous phone screens and in-persons where I confirmed the timeline before leaving (ie. you're going to make a decision on 'X' day and notify candidates) and the dickheads just straight tried to ghost me. I persisted until I got an answer, even if it was one I didn't like because you owe your applicants a goddamn answer either way.
My favorite is when you apply for a job and you get there and magically the job title/responsibilities have changed. It's like, y'all don't even know what you're looking for… get bent.
Recently went through something similar with a fairly well known tech company. I was told after nearly a whole day of workshops and interviews that I didn't make the cut. Was called back 3 months later and asked if I'd be interested in another role, organised an interview and the company cancelled it the night before.
Facebook wasted loads of my time before I even got onsite, with several shared-screen coding phone interviews spread over a month. Each time I would solve all the problems and get to working code but a week later they would ask me to do another interview.
I got reasons like "the interviewer quit without submitting his feedback" or "interviewer said he had hard time understanding your voice on the phone" (I'm a native english speaker and interviewer was not), or "interviewer lost his notes", etc.
Maybe my code just sucks and they were lying but I don't think so.
It took so long to get through that stage to the onsite that I felt like I'd already worked there.
My gf interviewed at google from 8am to 2:30pm (after 2 half-hour to hour-long phone screens).
Northrop Grumman had a (wasteful) 8 hour "college day" that was an hour of technical interviews, 4 hours of propaganda, and 2 hours of arbitrary fluff like team building games among the applicants.
The ~5 or so on-sites I've had apart from NG were 2-4 hours.
Told the last Google recruiter that contacted me "No, I've been through your interview process once years ago, I'm not subjecting myself to that again."
I got my current job after a brief phone screen and a one hour in-person interview. It came with a big pay increase and the smartest people I've worked with so far.
I'm not sure why so many companies insist on the days-long torture interviews (I've been through several), but I know they're not necessary to find good people.
A couple years ago I had TWO full-day interview sessions with a single company. That I had to take time off of my then-current job to attend. After a one-hour phone screen. Who ended up not hiring me anyway.
Unless the position was for serious fuck you money and I really needed it, there's no way in hell I would tolerate 2 full day interviews.
I'm also guilty for spending lots of after work days studying for jobs I really wanted and getting rejected but at least I didn't burn any of my precious vacation days.
I fell prey to the “sunk cost” fallacy - after the first full day when they asked me to come back, I thought: a) it would be a shame to “waste” that first full day of interviewing by saying no now and b) surely nobody would be a big enough asshole to ask me to take two full days off of work to interview with them only to reject me after the second day, so surely this second day is just a formality.
Apparently I was wrong.
And no, it was just a regular programming job, nothing special.
I have found that lightly pushing back on such requests makes them value you a little more. Doesn't matter too much since they should've valued you in the first place. I've had a couple processes expedited in this way, sometimes skipping a call here or there or changing a second onsite to a call.
I've done about 3 of these kinds of "interviews" in my career.. basically a small work for hire each. Didn't get the jobs.. but took great joy in checking in on each of these companies after 6 months to find they no longer existed.
No more easily than they can become developers. There are a hell of a lot of really crappy cybersec guys around who think the job is just the access control subset of sysadmin...
Locking down accounts you control on your infrastructure is vastly easier to scale than asset forfeiture. Scale and ease does matter here.
>I have never seen an argument against crypto currency that doesn't already apply to the current systems, we just pretend its not the same.
It's not the same: cryptocurrencies are generally more restrictive about reversing transactions (in that you can't), for instance. We can reverse some transactions in the current system.
Some call this a feature, but they're likely okay with every day people getting their shit stolen easily because they don't know anything about computer security.
RE: Reversing Transactions
- I'd call it a necessity for any currency. Cash works this way.
It's a middleman or escrow who performs this service. Credit Cards and banks act as the middlemen to reverse transactions. No reason cryptos can't have those too. I imagine Uphold or Coinbase or whoever can serve this function.
as far as people being thieved I would agree that it is important to shore up computer security. Physical wallets and stashes of cash also are stolen when security is lax. Again, a middleman might play a role to secure, just as banks do for USD/EUR /etc. Giving money to a bank is essentially delegating the protection of your savings. The alternative being a home safe or under a mattress where the security remains the holder's responsibility.
I came here to say that Nurse Practitioners are the ones who can do perscriptions. Not regular Registered Nurses. For anybody who might not already know. And correct it is only a doctor who can prescribe certain types of medications, likely stronger medications.
