Have a play with AWS Lambda or Google Cloud Functions, then compare that with Azure Functions and you might wonder if what Azure has done is even remotely “serverless” FaaS or just a huge messy clusterfuck of an App Service which is billed per second and overly complicated to manage and observe.
All 3 clouds have the same fundamental architecture. There's no magic "serverless", everything is just compiled down to a container or some executable package, placed on a server, executed as requests come in, and then paused with varying control and scheduling parameters.
Azure is a little messier than the rest but the end result is the same.
Get something-out-the-door to compete with Lambda and GCF by hacking together an abstraction over Azure App Services - then improve things by version 2?
I am a manager and do have a concern for company culture. Culture is how the teams work together - socially, professionally. It's harder to maintain culture remotely. It switches from something that "just happens" with a bit of care to something that has to be actively fostered.
It's easy do dehumanize a voice on the phone. Many people don't want to even use cameras for video calls. How much empathy do you have for a voice on the phone versus a human being you interact with in person on a daily basis?
I think the benefits of remote work far outweigh the work that needs to be done to maintain culture remotely, but it is a new challenge that doesn't have a lot of good understanding around how to make it work.
> I am a manager and do have a concern for company culture. Culture is how the teams work together - socially, professionally. It's harder to maintain culture remotely.
The main aspects of firm culture that make difference in a day to day life are minimizing company politics, avoiding blame-game, honest interaction and manager's support. In my experience, it is the manager who contributes the most towards either improving these or screwing them up. None of these things require you to be physically present in office. Rest of stuff like events, group lunches etc are nice to have but not having them won't impact you as much as a political and toxic work environment would.
> How much empathy do you have for a voice on the phone versus a human being you interact with in person on a daily basis?
Since when basic human decency became incumbent upon seeing someone in flesh in front of you? Are you saying that people can't behave professionally unless they are not physically in office? How do fully remote companies work?
> Many people don't want to even use cameras for video calls.
For the same reason people hate meetings - resolutions to that are also the same that apply to face-to-face meetings.
> I think the benefits of remote work far outweigh the work that needs to be done to maintain culture remotely, but it is a new challenge that doesn't have a lot of good understanding around how to make it work.
Agreed on that - a good starting point would be not use culture as a justification to force people to be in office.
> How much empathy do you have for a voice on the phone versus a human being you interact with in person on a daily basis?
Judging by the toxic office culture at some traditional (non-WFH) companies, lack of empathy has little to do with only hearing "a voice on the phone" vs interacting with "in person".
"Company culture" does not arise from physical presence. I've been at this for a long time, and have worked for all types of companies: mandated office presence, flexible WFH, and fully remote. All had company cultures, and the worst were the ones that forced people into an office. Being together in an office does not do anything productive. It does not create camaraderie or a culture, and the mythical hallways conversations that you hear about do not actually happen.
> it is a new challenge that doesn't have a lot of good understanding around how to make it work.
It's been going on for decades now. Time to catch up. Good WFH culture is matter of effective management. Skills required:
- good communication (knowing how to use the tools we have, like IM, video, and yes, even email)
- being responsive (this is a habit that must be cultivated in many cases)
- focus on goals and achievements instead of distractions like seeing someone in a hallway and assuming that if they seem to be working, they must be working
> Your exaggeration and dismissal is perfect evidence of your inability to empathize with the struggles of people you haven't met in real life.
Calm down, you're overreacting. A single sentence is hardly "perfect evidence of inability to empathize" with others. Talk about "exaggeration"...
I somewhat agree with lupire: If someone only has empathy with their coworkers – who they're interacting with daily – if they can physically see them, then that's saying something.
I would think that if anyone is overreacting it's the person who thinks people who struggle to identify with remote workers are sociopaths. I haven't made any black and white statements or used absolute terms such as "no empathy". I know people in general struggle with nuance, but come on - I'm making it easy here.
> I don't want to work with sociopaths who can't be kind to a voice on the phone.
Sociopaths are an outliers and rare.
But most people empathize less with people they have not met in person (prof: the internet, even before social media).
Add deadlines and stress to that, and you have otherwise normal people behaving worse than they would otherwise. Source: me, working with remote teams for past 20 years.
Like the person above said, you (or someone) have to
be actively on the lookout for such issues, or things can get get bad really fast (I am talking days and weeks not months).
It's impossible to overstate how much I agree with the need for a separate project management role. Project management is the biggest distraction I have from the "things only I can do" and the biggest morale and time suck. I don't have advice to give because I haven't solved my lack-of-project-management problem, but I sincerely believe I could be much more effective if this was off my plate.
One on one meetings are not "creepy" - they are a chance to have an open conversation about your goals; your concerns; and anything else that needs to be discussed about your career, the organization, etc.
Do you know what the sales people in your organization do? What about the legal department? Procurement? HR? Your lack of knowledge is not evidence.
"lol, do some coding instead"? And what should I code? How do you know what _you_ should be coding? Where does that work come from? Who makes sure that you're writing quality code and not some shit spaghetti mess? When the lawyers come knocking who answers the questions about security and compliance? You're just going to write some code for that?
Your myopic complaints do nothing to further your own goals - rather than make baseless accusations, look into the problems yourself and try to solve them. You might get some career growth out of it. At the very least you'll understand that not all problems can be solved with code.
I mean, I understand why 1:1 are considered necessary, but I still get the creepy vibe. It's probably mostly my introversion speaking, but this is honestly how I feel about it.
> conversation about your goals; your concerns; and anything else that needs to be discussed about your career
What goals exactly? We do sprint planning every spring, plus all that backlog refinement and other stuff.
Long-term goals? Well, they don't change that often (that's what "long-term" means). Neither does my career. So having this kind of debate once or twice a year would be quite enough.
The two people in the meeting decide it. I'm sure if either of them are creepy then you will end up with a creepy meeting. Otherwise it's just a professional meeting with an agenda and a desired outcome, like any other.
If you have no goals that's your failing, not the meeting's. If you lack the imagination to see where you want your career to go or the introspection to see where it's headed then, again, your fault - not the meeting.
Questions I get in my one on one's with people who care and are going places:
-Why is the organization failing at x/y/z? How can I make that better? Is it worth fixing?
-I am having trouble accomplishing e/f/g goal - I've hit q/r/s roadblock. What do you recommend I do about this?
-I want your job, how can I change what I am doing to get me closer to what you do?
I also use them to get information I need from these people:
-How is your team doing? Is anyone under/overvalued?
-Are your commitments on track?
-Is there anything I can do to make you or your team more effective?
I mostly have these meetings monthly. A month is long enough for things to change. 6 months is too long - too many things have changed, too many have been forgotten.
If you're revisiting Chick's music due to this event or learning of him for the first time, here's a duet that may introduce you to another electrifying pianist, Hiromi Uehara:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRU1o-sCnqY
You must not have tried to hire a software engineer before. In a hiring cycle I encounter multiple "Senior Engineers" who can't write basic code. Fizzbuzz. Can't do it. Engineers should absolutely expect to write real code in an interview. It's preposterous to think that someone can claim to have 20 years experience writing code and then be offended to spend 20 minutes doing it in an interview.
I make a judgement call - either I end the interview immediately or skip most of the rest of the interview, let them think they made it all the way through the interview and say that we will get back to them with a decision later. When I end it immediately they usually take it badly but these are times that I just can’t justify wasting any more time on them. The bad reactions run the normal gamut of bad human reactions: angry, sad, indifferent, humor, etc.
> [I] let them think they made it all the way through the interview
Maybe then, although they get rejected later, they still won't be particularly upset at your company -- since the in person interaction was friendly and positive (i suppose), and you can take some time and write a friendly rejection email or phone call too (i suppose you have a template)
I agree with this wholeheartedly. The article seems to be written by someone who has not yet learned the life lesson that "everything is a negotiation".
There's no such thing as a hard deadline. Everything is made up. What your manager is saying is: "To be successful in the market, I think I need to have X thing in Y days."
It's the engineer's responsibility to provide information and estimates that will shape the business's direction. If you don't clarify or negotiate requirements based on your technical knowledge and experience and just take requirements as law written in stone you are not providing the true value of an engineer.
If you are doing that - pushing back and grounding requirements in reality - and the business plows ahead with unrealistic goals anyway, then that simply means the people you work with are unreasonable and you should seek employment elsewhere. If they're not even willing to listen to people they're paying to have expertise then they're probably reading the market wrong too and I wouldn't trust them to be around long anyway.
There's no such thing as a hard deadline. Everything is made up.
"This video processing software needs to be ready by the Superbowl" or "This electronic voting software needs to be done by election day" don't strike you as hard deadlines?
Often this video processing software wasn’t ready by the Superbowl, and this electronic voting software wasn’t completed by election day.
You don’t get sacked, you just get to work on the next death-march project. And for your two examples, it might be punted to the next Superbowl or election.
I guess that depends on your definition of "hard". Will the world end if you don't meet that regulatory deadline? No. Will the company survive? Maybe. Will you lose your job? Maybe. Are there other jobs for you? Yes.
When we can't change the deadline, it's obvious that we should shift the scope. If that breaks down, the problem becomes not losing your entire engineering team while the deadline looms.
I'm a hiring manager and I start our technical interviews with coding problems. I have seen too many candidates who can't write code to ever be ok hiring someone who I haven't seen write code with their own hands.
I understand that you are highly compensated and may not want to spend time trying out for a new job when you already make so much money, but from my perspective: I have a team of highly compensated individuals who are evaluating a candidate for potential hire and I don't want to waste all of their time if the candidate can't even write a simple algorithm to rearrange the characters in a string.
Since it sounds like you're pretty happy where you're at you have the freedom to choose to participate or not. I am guessing that the only way to pull away a candidate like you is by referral anyway, so I am guessing there's not actually a problem here.
If I am getting someone via referral, then interviews can focus on what you find valuable - I can sell you on the role, I can ask you personality questions and make sure there is goal alignment. If I have someone to vouch for you. If you're a stranger? You better believe you gotta write some code.
I think that if you take a step back and ask yourself if you'd really like to work at a place where they hire people who they haven't seen code, you'd probably rather choose to just write some code for 30 minutes in an interview.
You have set up a strawman -- I didn't say go hire people who haven't seen code, I didn't even say don't do skill testing questions. The question is: at what point in the interview process do you start dumping skill testing questions at them? And I think as the first gate to pass, this is just awful.
Further there's also a question of what kinds of questions, and how the question is asked, but that is a separate topic.
In any case, as a tangent: Most of the questions asked in these interviews have little to do with the day to day tasks of software engineers. So I'm not sure they give much insight into the performance of software engineers doing software engineering. But they do give preference to the skills obtained in CS algorithms courses, so there is an intrinsic bias towards hiring new grads.
I did address your question - I ask them to write code first. It may waste your time, but it saves time for my team. You can't code? Ok, the interview is over. Thanks for your time.
There's lots of debate on what kind of coding questions to ask. My questions are more fizz-buzz and less CS textbook. You'd be amazed how many people apply for senior level software engineer roles who can't demonstrate basic programming skills.
It's also super awkward to talk to someone and get a real good understanding of their experience, how they fit, what they've done, what they'd want to do.... and then find out they can't code. And this does happen. It's much nicer for all involved to do that early in the process and write it off as a formality because it's a humiliation to throw that at someone at the last minute. It's an insulting waste of time for any decent candidate, but there are always candidates who can do everything but code and you have to weed those guys out.
And from an applicant's perspective, I actually prefer getting the coding part out of the way up-front. It allows me to relax for the rest of the interview and just "be myself".
Found the person letting good candidates slip through the cracks. I literally just rescinded my application from a place when given a far too-open as far as choose-your-own-stack take-home assignment. I chose one very, very popular library that had unbeknownst to me, been slightly broken for some time. I fixed the library instead of doing the assignment and submitted an upstream pull. The recruiter's response was something along the lines of: "well, if you're having trouble completing the assignment, maybe you're not a right fit." I verbally handed the recruiter their ass, something more people need to start doing, and walked.
I've also been turned down for telling someone XML wasn't something people needed to really "know" to work with. The stack bias and navel-gazing of recruiters in their vainglorious attempts to prove that what they're doing is useful has reached peak.
American in Texas here - maybe this is a behavior encouraged by the very thing we're discussing, but going to the grocery store _every day_ is a big yikes to me. I go once a week and get everything I need for that week. Because I take my car, I can carry that amount of stuff.
When a grocery store is very nearby and you go to the grocery store, you can get your produce fresher. And you don't have to plan your meals, which may or may not be a positive side (it is for me).
Err, no? I live in Montreal, I've carried produce and other kinds of food by bike or by walk in -30C to +40C weather. It doesn't take so long that your food becomes damaged.
If you're carrying frozen food, we have bags with insulation and reflective foil on the inside. Put your frozen food there and even in +40C weather it will take much more than 15 minutes to thaw. Besides, buses and obviously the metros are acclimatized to a temperature of more or less 25C.
It really is just a non-issue. I assure you your produce are left outside for more than 20 minutes. There is no impact at all on freshness, and walkable cities promote smaller grocery stores that tend to have fresher food.
It's remarkable to see people so detached from their natural origins to believe produce will freze or spoil when extracted from the supermarket and exposed to the outside world for a few minutes. Unless you are living at the North-Pole and need to walk more than half an hour in arctic blizzards, there is physically no way your food can freeze on the way back from the supermarket.
Food grows outside, in direct sunlight, exposed to scorching heat or near-freezing temperatures. Most of the plant based food is still living in the shelf when you purchase it, and has imune systems to fight-off bacteria and the like that would otherwise colonize it. The only concern are products of animal origin in the heat, but even the most sensitive like refrigerated fresh fish, still needs at least a few hours in hot weather before they can become problematic.
> Going once a week is efficient, but a little difficult to match up to a diet full of fresh fish, fruits, & vegetables.
This has never been a problem for me. Many fresh fruits and vegetables will easily last for a week in your refrigerator (some for longer), and fresh fish or meat can be frozen for later use. Fruits such as berries that degrade rapidly can be eaten first, and fruits that last longer, such as apples or oranges, can be eaten later. Fruits like peaches or avocados can also be bought in varying states of ripeness, which means that different ones could achieve ripeness over the course of a week.
pre-covid I stopped by the grocery store almost every day to pick up whatever I wanted for dinner.
Back when I lived across the street from a grocery store I'd sometimes go get food for dinner, talk a bit with guests for what we wanted for desert, then walk over and pick up whatever we'd decided on. When the grocery store is across the street it is basically an on-demand food pantry.
I lived in Dallas for a long time, at my last house a Whole Foods, a "neighborhood" Walmart and a Trader Joes popped up pretty much equidistant (7 minute walk) from my house. It is quite pleasant, actually, to walk to the grocery store and get groceries for that night's dinner. Since then I've always lived within a 10 minute walk and generally get one to two (paper) sacks of groceries two or three times a week, sometimes more often. Temptation to snack is drastically reduced as we only have 2 days of food in the house.
It all just ties together. Going to the grocery store every day is a big yikes because you can't walk around the block to pick up fresh produce for dinner
Yeah, I live a block from my grocery store in SF, and I still only go 1-2 times a week unless I need something fresh for today / missing ingredient, which is rare since I plan ahead and only buy things that will last at least a few days.
Living in a dense city like SF is great for somethings, but it sucks when you want to leave, and paying almost $400/month for parking isn't good either. Both lifestyles have their advantages and I think it really comes out to personal taste and choice.
