The reference to the Redditor that automated his work and took a disproportionate portion of the bonus pool was a strong example of changes to come. Any thoughts on that piece?
The Reddit question wasn't really what I would consider relevant for HN, but I personally found the ethical issues at least a little bit interesting. I commented on it: my thoughts being that he should stay under the radar of management and do side work to earn more money. This is by no means ethical, and I'm assuming a fairly dysfunctional company structure, but in my experience that's the way things work in the real world.
Typo in the Bloc.io link URL in the closing line, block.io should be bloc.io : "Jared Tame is a co-founder and mentor at Bloc, where he’s teaching people how to become web developers in 8 weeks."
I've given this some thought, subcontracting isn't something I'm super familiar with but it's definitely worth looking into. Things are way too early to tell yet.
The author looks to be planning a future post on how he plans to take on this responsibility. Can anyone (who feels that they have 'taken full responsibility') share what path they have forged?
Over the last fifteen years, I have taken full responsibility for my own education.
Reading has played the most fundamental role in my education. I have always loved learning from well-written books. At times, it might have been a disadvantage to not have a mentor to guide my progress or to answer questions. I'm certainly not a "gifted" learner and I have often spent long hours trying to understand a page of a book. But it is always incredibly satisfying when I finally do.
I think the most rewarding thing about taking responsibility for your own learning is gaining both humility and confidence. I am humbled by the amount of things I still have yet to learn in the enormous field of computer science. But I have also gained an enormous confidence in my _ability_ to learn. I know, from fifteen years of experience, that I can learn anything I want to as long as I apply myself.
Another benefit is that books are far cheaper than classrooms, they're portable, they go at your pace (you can turn the pages as quickly or slowly as you want), and you can keep them on a shelf to refer to for the rest of your life. And e-books are even better!
Having the information normalized as you suggest would be great. Breaking it up into a ~5 point scale (especially if it took advantage of visual cues) would save some mental effort. Perhaps relative font sizes?
The article closes with the thought that there may be a related 'cognitive universal'. This list reads like a bare-bones version of the human experience: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_universal
