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This thread is full of bad opinions right now.
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Oct 21, 2017 23:51
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ITT People passionately opinionated. My opinion is the best one tho.
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Oct 21, 2017 23:58
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AskYourself posted:ITT People passionately opinionated. My opinion is the best one tho. This. Except, me.
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Oct 22, 2017 00:12
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Heard through the grapevine that Experts Exchange laid off its entire Sales department. I wonder how long it'll be before management finally decides the company can no longer support itself in its current form. Of course, I wondered that the other times they laid off the entire Sales department, too. Still waiting to feel some schadenfreude when the COO who laid me off gets the axe. (Why "COO" and not "CEO"? Well, when he completed his coup that ousted the former CEO and the rest of the execs, he promoted himself to Chief Operations Officer because it was "more accurate" for whatever the gently caress he was planning to do all day in his office. There hasn't been a CEO since, to my knowledge.)
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Oct 22, 2017 01:17
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What was the sales department selling? Ads? Enterprise membership? How does EE make money?
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Oct 22, 2017 01:23
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lifg posted:What was the sales department selling? Ads? Enterprise membership? Both, as far as I knew. Shortly before I left, they also came up with something similar to Stack Exchange, where a company can pay for EE to host a support site, basically. I kept worrying about that feature's longevity, because it sure seemed like there wasn't a whole lot of value in what we were offering these companies. Now I've been gone for ten months, so I'm just guessing, but I bet a bunch of those companies declined to renew their subscriptions. lifg posted:How does EE make money? I don't want to skirt the NDA, so I'll couch everything in what should be public knowledge. From looking at the site, that a portion of the revenue comes from the paid subscriptions. From looking at traffic stats and Google search results, you can tell what kind of effect a free site like Stack Overflow might have on a paid site like Experts Exchange! So you can guess why they added a Sales department (and conclude that its demise is a pretty bad sign)!
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Oct 22, 2017 01:37
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CPColin posted:Both, as far as I knew. Shortly before I left, they also came up with something similar to Stack Exchange, where a company can pay for EE to host a support site, basically. I kept worrying about that feature's longevity, because it sure seemed like there wasn't a whole lot of value in what we were offering these companies. Now I've been gone for ten months, so I'm just guessing, but I bet a bunch of those companies declined to renew their subscriptions. There's definitely some value, a lot of vendors for complex things like micros want to have their own support portal because they don't want to have a real fully sized customer service department.
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Oct 22, 2017 01:44
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Correction: there would have been some value, had the feature worked properly. It got to the MVP stage, with bugs, and they immediately started selling it.
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Oct 22, 2017 06:08
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AskYourself posted:Also sometimes it seems like being passionate about code is the only passion candidate should have. What about being passionate about fitness as well as code ? Or being passionate about being a good father. I am passionate about code but I don't spend all my free time coding because I have other passions in my life. I can answer with confidence that I am passionate about code but it doesn't mean I will work for free or that I will learn a new framework every weekend. My passion for coding and building software does translate into a commitment to produce quality work.
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Oct 22, 2017 06:20
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I remember experts exchange, it had useful stuff years ago, but you always had to scroll past the fake/lying message that said you needed a premium account to view the answer. Great business model. 
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Oct 22, 2017 10:01
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I'm very passionate about breathing - I even do it in my sleep!
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Oct 23, 2017 14:57
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amotea posted:I remember experts exchange, it had useful stuff years ago, but you always had to scroll past the fake/lying message that said you needed a premium account to view the answer. Great business model. Fun fact: It was only fake if you, like most of the site's traffic, were coming from a search engine results page! Google had a rule where you couldn't show its crawler content that you didn't also show somebody who clicked on a search results link, so EE would check your referrer and put the answers at the bottom if you came from Google. If you started clicking around the site after that, the answers wouldn't show up any more. Naturally, everybody hated that, even internally. Articles and blog posts started popping up about how EE was gaming the system. Then more articles popped up about how all you had to do was look in Google's cache to see all the content. Very few articles popped up saying how helpful EE was, sometimes. We kept insisting to Marketing that we were trading our site's reputation for a few extra sign-ups and Marketing had to sigh and toe the line from the bosses to keep doing it. Remember how EE used to dominate Google results? Remember when that stopped? Well Google changed their algorithm to account for reputation! Now, if you clicked a search result, waited fifteen seconds for the bloated HTML to load, saw the paywall, and immediately bounced, Google wouldn't rank you so high next time. The chickens had come home to roost. But don't worry, the higher-ups immediately put a plan into action and five years later, the paywall finally came down.
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Oct 23, 2017 15:42
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Ironically just in time for Google to start allowing search results to have a paywall.
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Oct 23, 2017 16:18
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Plorkyeran posted:Ironically just in time for Google to start allowing search results to have a paywall. I think that's just for news, though, isn't it?
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Oct 23, 2017 16:33
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I kinda felt bad for EE after Stack Overflow came out. It was like Mapquest after Google Maps dropped: overnight they just got lapped.
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Oct 23, 2017 17:02
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That’s life, I guess. Sometimes you end up working at a place that loses all its business or runs out of money within 6~12 months of starting, and you gotta move again. I guess in that situation it sucks, but your only option is to move on, cause it’s not something you can predict.
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Oct 23, 2017 17:19
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Congrats Pollyanna on the 
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Oct 24, 2017 16:30
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Tyty  It’s hard not to get worried when a big change like this happens. What if X fails, what if I’m not good enough, etc. Impostor syndrome and chicken littling isn’t easy to get rid of 
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Oct 24, 2017 16:35
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Pollyanna posted:Tyty Feeling scared is what keeps you motivated, and lets you know you are doing something sufficiently challenging. If you aren't scared at all, you're bored and should move on.
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Oct 24, 2017 16:45
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Skandranon posted:Feeling scared is what keeps you motivated, and lets you know you are doing something sufficiently challenging. If you aren't scared at all, you're bored and should move on.
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Oct 25, 2017 00:23
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I'm scared of burning out, so I let my manager know that I planned on having a chill quarter and she was ok with that. I'm pretty happy with my job right now on the whole.
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Oct 25, 2017 00:44
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A developer taking it easy and who knows what he is doing is much more valuable than a developer who goes fast without a clue. Appears you know what you are doing.
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Oct 25, 2017 06:35
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Heard from an old coworker at Experts Exchange that there was a "major layoff" today. Heard from my old PO, who is still off today, from celebrating her wedding over the weekend, that her entire team has had its HipChat access revoked. Her work email has nothing about the situation in it. I'm guessing the COO, who is a fart that has assumed mostly human form, is waiting to tell her until tomorrow, to be "considerate." Edit: lol the COO resigned last week without telling anybody 
CPColin fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Oct 25, 2017 |
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Oct 25, 2017 19:54
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Relevant to our little discussion about passion last week. I have no side code projects to show you
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Oct 25, 2017 21:49
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AskYourself posted:Relevant to our little discussion about passion last week. Reading that article reminded me of another one. Just imagine that they're talking about developers instead of chickens
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Oct 25, 2017 21:59
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The Fool posted:Reading that article reminded me of another one. Looking forward to peck my colleagues to death tomorrow.
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Oct 25, 2017 22:04
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Keetron posted:Looking forward to peck my colleagues to death tomorrow. I think of myself more of those Rats from Skyfall https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yI1hjITn8Q
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Oct 25, 2017 22:11
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AskYourself posted:Relevant to our little discussion about passion last week. I almost want to go interview at a start up just to gently caress with people. I'd love to see the reaction to something like: Me: I'm really passionate about my work, and only want to work with passionate people as well. CEO: Great! Well you'll find we're all really passionate here! Me: So can you share with me some of the companies you manage when you leave here? Are there any public companies you're a CEO for on the weekends I can check out?
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Oct 26, 2017 01:19
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Hughlander posted:Me: So can you share with me some of the companies you manage when you leave here? Are there any public companies you're a CEO for on the weekends I can check out? I had a manager who claimed that he managed open-source projects on the weekends. He was a buffoon and a dick. I bet they'd tell you about mentoring other CEOs.
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Oct 26, 2017 01:30
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Mniot posted:I had a manager who claimed that he managed open-source projects on the weekends. He was a buffoon and a dick. Good project managers are invaluable (I have seen a couple in the last 20 years). I can do just fine without run-of-the-mill ones though.
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Oct 26, 2017 03:08
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The idea of a family man that spends most of his spare time fixing bugs in an open-source dependency injection container that's used for free by big corporations is really funny to me. Seriously though, if you have kids and do this you are loving them up forever. Stop working in your spare time dumbasses.
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Oct 26, 2017 11:46
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Hughlander posted:I almost want to go interview at a start up just to gently caress with people. I'd love to see the reaction to something like: Please do, that actually sounds hilarious.
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Oct 26, 2017 15:28
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So my next position will be remote. I’ve heard time and time again that remote requires a degree of rigor and structure to pull off, which is a challenge I’m ready to face. This one will be especially interesting, since there’s a -3hr time difference between most of the company and myself. The advice I’ve heard boils down to: 1. Keep your work life and personal life separate. This means either working outside your home, or reserving a particular part of it exclusively for work. e.g., an office room or a desk. This is the one I’m most concerned about. 2. Keep a strict schedule every day to prevent yourself from starting bad habits and staying sane. 3. Make sure to socialize, since it can get lonely! I’ve been considering comping a coworking space membership since I still want to get out and about, just on my own terms and when I feel like it - but man, is that poo poo expensive... Any other advice for a first-time remote worker?
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Oct 26, 2017 17:18
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Do you have a coworking space near you? Here in Ann Arbor, there's a decent space available for about 40 bucks a month. Well worth it for remote people who need office-like space.
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Oct 26, 2017 17:27
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Pollyanna posted:So my next position will be remote. I’ve heard time and time again that remote requires a degree of rigor and structure to pull off, which is a challenge I’m ready to face. This one will be especially interesting, since there’s a -3hr time difference between most of the company and myself. Definitely try to reserve some sort of space so you can clearly delineate work/not work. I had a remote work position before and it didn't go well, and while the major factor was my main project got cancelled so I had nothing to do for awhile, I let home/work bleed too much to the point where I never properly felt at work, and I never felt properly at home. If you want to progress in the organization, it's going to be difficult as you are not there, so you're going to have to be conspicuously present in every online way conceivable. People will forget about you so find ways to inject and involve yourself with things.
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Oct 26, 2017 17:28
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Pollyanna posted:Any other advice for a first-time remote worker? Another useful trick for calling into meetings on audio is to take them standing up--or at least stand up for important points. It helps project your voice. Do not take them laying back. If everybody at this job is remote then you're in a better place than if you're some voice over a phone. If the latter, then you'll have to initiate a lot of conversations. If you don't, then you'll be the mysterious cave troll doing god-knows-what.
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Oct 26, 2017 17:33
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Pollyanna posted:So my next position will be remote. I’ve heard time and time again that remote requires a degree of rigor and structure to pull off, which is a challenge I’m ready to face. This one will be especially interesting, since there’s a -3hr time difference between most of the company and myself. How much of the company works remote? How set-up are they for it?
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Oct 26, 2017 17:45
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Pollyanna posted:I’ve been considering comping a coworking space membership since I still want to get out and about, just on my own terms and when I feel like it - but man, is that poo poo expensive... Your neighborhood coffee shop can be a remote workspace for the low low price of whatever their cheapest beverage is per day.
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Oct 26, 2017 17:46
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a foolish pianist posted:Do you have a coworking space near you? Here in Ann Arbor, there's a decent space available for about 40 bucks a month. Well worth it for remote people who need office-like space. There’s a WeWork I could get to, but a membership there is like $400 a month which is  . Still doing research on my options tho!Skandranon posted:Definitely try to reserve some sort of space so you can clearly delineate work/not work. I had a remote work position before and it didn't go well, and while the major factor was my main project got cancelled so I had nothing to do for awhile, I let home/work bleed too much to the point where I never properly felt at work, and I never felt properly at home. The company has a lot of remote workers and has a culture of collaborating over video chat and conference calls, so I’m not too worried about not feeling included or anything. I do find it important to ensure presence, though - I think I can manage it. Rocko Bonaparte posted:I'm not technically remote, but the team I'm working with at my current job is 2 time zones away. I might as well be remote. I find it useful to change locations particularly when switching contexts. Switching between blocks of meetings to blocks of coding is particularly useful for this, but even moving around when going from one coding activity to another helps compartmentalize things in your own mind. Make sure you get up and pace around at between spurt of coding. This makes it tricky to find a venue for coding. Instead, I would suggest traveling out for the meetings instead of for the coding. I have hosed-up executive functions (yay for ADD), so keeping some sort of structure and context switching is important for me. I’ll make sure to compartmentalize well, hence why I’m looking for a coworking space. I like having the option to work at home if I feel like it, but being home bound 24/7 would suck. Not everyone at the company is remote - I’d say about half to most of the engineers are remote, but the others are local. That said, I got a good impression from the remote workers I did speak with, so I’m confident it will go well.
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Oct 26, 2017 17:48
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Pollyanna posted:So my next position will be remote. I’ve heard time and time again that remote requires a degree of rigor and structure to pull off, which is a challenge I’m ready to face. This one will be especially interesting, since there’s a -3hr time difference between most of the company and myself. When it's time to get to work, get dressed. Sounds dumb, but when you can just work in your sweats or whatever, the line blurs between work / not-work (as you mentioned in point 1) so put your your work clothes to help you mentally enter that space. I worked from home for 7 years, and that was a huge help. The strict schedule thing: make sure it's not too strict. The thing to ask is "am I doing what is expected of me to the best of my ability", not "did I turn on my computer at exactly 8:45:00 and not look away for X hours" Good luck on the new gig!
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Oct 26, 2017 18:05
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