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Arsenic Lupin posted:Twitter is offering valued employees $50k to $200K to stay rather than accepting a job elsewhere. This is also a sinking-ship sign, because it means they're also having trouble hiring. Eh, Twitter is a strange place to work. I have a friend who spent about 6 weeks there and she quit because she literally did not know what she was supposed to be doing. Organization there seems to be nonexistent, if that's true across the board it's not much of a stretch to wonder why they're having trouble retaining talent. Then again, did they ever figure out how they're going to make money from it?
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Mar 10, 2016 21:20
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WampaLord posted:Are you kidding me? If she was getting paid and not getting yelled at for doing nothing that sounds like the perfect job. Basically this: FilthyImp posted:Jobs like that suck because you just sit around all day and try to fill the 8 hours you're mandated to be there. After the second week of binge-watching something on Netflix, while occasionally answering emails or spending a handful of hours on a small project, you start going stir crazy. I'm getting to that point myself, honestly.
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Mar 10, 2016 23:49
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axeil posted:Because it was SAS and all written in macro nested in macro nested in macro code. You had to turn on all the macro log printing options to figure out what was getting passed, which would make the simple .txt log files measure in the hundreds of megabytes. I would ask how much of it was documented but I think I know the answer.
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Mar 30, 2016 20:27
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duz posted:Do you have a conscious? Apparently not, because I just came up with an idea that could be a horrifyingly efficient way to generate cash out of sheer guilt. I have no loving clue how to bring it to market, sadly, because I'm not that evil. Although I'm quickly refining it.
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Apr 1, 2016 00:35
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Harik posted:Does current fusion-work compare at all with the scale of the Manhattan project, or the moonshot? I know it's huge, but I have no idea how it compares to GDP relatively. As a percentage of GDP, it's nowhere near close. But that funding is going other places, and not just the ones folks like to demonize like DOD - it also funds biotech research, it funds massively enlarged welfare programs, things like that. I'm not sure if the problem is funding or science though - and I'd really like to hear more about that from someone more knowledgeable than me.
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Apr 1, 2016 06:38
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One interesting note on secondary markets is that there is a limit to the number of shareholders a privately held company has before they have to publish financial reports similar to what a publicly traded must, by SEC regulations. It's one of the reasons Facebook went public, they passed that threshold and decided may as well just IPO now if we have to do the legwork anyway.
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Apr 14, 2016 09:25
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pangstrom posted:Uber is trying to spin it as his not wanting a COO to come on (I don't know much about corporate titles, but in my mind "president" is basically "COO by another name"). He's basically trying to spin it as "I'm leaving because this place is a not-my-fault disaster, I just got here." This. I've read independently that the dude hates conflict, and going from a relatively stable retail enterprise to one of the hottest software companies was probably a culture shift he wasn't ready for. No shame in that, though he hosed up the delivery by announcing to the press and not handing it off to Uber to announce instead.
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Mar 20, 2017 13:36
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ohgodwhat posted:How the gently caress do you get to c-level if you hate conflict? Isn't handling conflict in various forms a requirement of the job? It's in how you handle conflict vs. how a company's culture creates/handles conflict. Target, where the guy came from, is a mature enterprise with corporate controls in place and a history of relative stability. Read this post by that guy about Target, written while he was CMO there: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140513221110-3501295-the-truth-hurts Compare that to the CEO's most recent release, wherein he says he needs to grow up after berating a driver: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...m=.e81920ee1c83 It's a significant culture clash, Jeff Jones came from a place that prized stability, planning, and inclusion and was put into a company with a history of abusing its own drivers, sexual harassment, and a CEO that doesn't mind telling everyone around him to gently caress off. It is unsurprising that the guy wasn't successful there, if anything it's surprising he took the job in the first place.
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Mar 20, 2017 13:51
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WrenP-Complete posted:I know what they mean, but they really couldn't think of a better phrasing than "promotes women's inclusion for all employees?" Hey, if they're openly supporting trans rights I'm OK with that.
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Mar 29, 2017 19:44
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silence_kit posted:Of course sexism is a major systemic problem in engineering professions, and was especially in the past. However, one thing that people conveniently leave out when they go on their spiel about how programming used to be women's work and once it became a man's job, it became extremely lucrative is that software & process automation has killed a lot of the lower-skilled jobs in engineering, and now there aren't as many technician and lower-skilled jobs in engineering as there used to be. To equate the really highly-compensated, tip-top talent software engineer jobs in Silicon Valley with the ENIAC programmer jobs during WWII is more than a little misleading. Last I checked, ENIAC didn't exist until after WWII. Edit: To clarify, was operational. The project started during WWII - but nobody was programming it at the time. Shooting Blanks fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Apr 5, 2017 |
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Apr 5, 2017 07:53
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call to action posted:Isn't Uber's/Otto's tech the only real competitor to Google/Waymo? Not only are they not the only competitor, they are by the most recent report I've seen woefully far behind Waymo...and everyone else. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/04/uber-google-waymo-self-driving-cars quote:According to driving statistics compiled by an analyst firm, Uber is the worst of six major self-driving car companies testing its vehicles in the state.
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Apr 6, 2017 17:23
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namaste faggots posted:How come we haven't seen any massively disrupting startups using crispr to do unspeakable things? Because the patent case is still unfolding (though progress has been made recently), and currently the only licenses issued are exclusive to 3 different for-profit companies. I'm not sure about academic and non-profit use, but for the moment the technology is off limits if you're trying to make a buck.
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Apr 9, 2017 23:14
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While the fact that they're getting let off with a fine is troubling, I'm not too worried about them restarting operations. Their blowout was too public, I don't think any VC will touch them again.
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Apr 18, 2017 01:18
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It isnt just that they've been shut down, but they have no professional credibility given the fraudulent nature of their business previously, and the fact that every investor they had got screwed. That name is a four letter word in technology now, and actual biotech investors know better as well. The chance that they will return is miniscule.
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Apr 18, 2017 04:07
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Its going to be very interesting to see which of these are still in business and seen widespread adoption in 5 years. A good friend of mine is an early adopter for all kinds of tech, which is nice for me as I get to hear from him what is useful and what isn't. So far the devices he likes the most are Hue lighting and Nest.
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Apr 19, 2017 20:06
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https://www.amazon.com/Quirky-Minder-Wink-Enabled-Smart/dp/B00GN92KQ4
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Apr 20, 2017 14:37
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Zikan posted:doesn't twitter still employ an insane number of programmers for it's size and lack constantly adding features like facebook does I have a friend who worked there for a month or two. She quit despite the money (which was great) because she had no idea what she was supposed to be doing or who she was supposed to report to.
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Apr 27, 2017 06:11
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skull mask mcgee posted:It's actually pretty loving depressing to be obligated to spend 8 hours a day at the office doing nothing because management has no sense of direction. This. Certain companies can be toxic on your resume, as has been mentioned previously in this thread (Uber and Yahoo specifically)
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Apr 27, 2017 09:38
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anonumos posted:Tap water doesn't disrupt poo poo. We've spent decades neglecting public water systems (see Flint) to the point that actual clean water from a privately owned fountain is seen as better. Plus, the amount of waste created by bottled water is incredible (between production, bottling, and distribution), not to mention the effect on aquifers supporting the bottling plants and the locales they should be serving. I see people in the grocery store buying cases of bottled water each week - out of convenience, lack of faith in city water, who knows. Yeah, his product isn't exactly novel but if he can cut down on bottled water consumption that's a good thing. I have far fewer issues with this than, say, Plenti.
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Apr 28, 2017 17:31
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:
I would love to know what company this is. Holy poo poo.
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May 3, 2017 03:29
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pentyne posted:So, this isn't like some normal corporate employee poaching, its straight up industrial espionage with fake companies being created, secret stock transfers, massive amounts of information copied and stolen, and then a concerted effort to cover it all up and destroy the evidence? Correct. Based on what was posted, it appears that Uber and Levandowski conspired for him to leave Google/Waymo and immediately start a new company, which opens up a ton of questions in terms of theft of trade secrets. The $250MM award isn't evidence of guilt in and of itself, but along with an e-mail stating that both his deliverables were high as was his asking price, it begs the question of what he told Uber he could deliver, and how and when it was developed. There are a couple possible scenarios here:
He developed a product while employed at Google/Waymo, and took that to Otto/Uber. He developed a product the day after leaving Google. The first option is flat out theft, and it is what Google is alleging - that he copied data from Google and took it with him. The second option is a gray area, and I'm not a lawyer so someone with more expertise may be able to shed more light on it, BUT - Levandowski was primarily employed by Waymo to develop and build a self driving car, which includes any technology that goes into it. If he developed his own solution on company time (even if outside of work hours), it could be argued that Google still owns the rights to it. More to the point, it looks really bad for him and for Uber if he was in fact negotiating with them to deliver a product or technology while still employed at Google/Waymo, especially if any feature/functions existed in the Google solution and weren't otherwise in widespread use. Frankly, even if it's a legal gray area, Google still has a very strong case here. It's just a matter of what can be proven. The third option from that list is...unlikely. As for possible punishment, I have no idea what the guidelines are beyond to say that yes, depending on what happens, federal prison time is a possibility.
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May 3, 2017 23:57
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Every software/hardware company I have ever worked for has had you sign a statement when you joined defining which things you create, on your own time or otherwise, belong to the company. I've seen everything from "everything creative you do belongs to us, even if it has nothing to do with the computer industry" -- I literally couldn't get HP to sign a statement that this didn't apply to publishing fiction -- to "everything you do belongs to us, unless you get permission first". I have never, ever seen "If it's in your free time, go wild!" It is a near certainty that he had to sign something to that effect, but I haven't heard it mentioned anywhere yet. Completely agree though, I would be surprised if he didn't sign that type of contract.
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May 4, 2017 18:39
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blah_blah posted:It's very infrequently enforced. There's a ton of very successful startups out there, spawned from some of the bigger names in tech, that literally rebuilt some internal tool they developed at their prior company as their new startup's product. Anti-poaching clauses are the same -- they sound draconian in practice, but end up getting routinely ignored with no consequences. Which is why this case is different. Levandowski (allegedly!) got a $250MM payout, in return for ~10GB of Waymo data. Intellectual capital and experience is one thing, hard data is another. More to the point, he started a new company and almost immediately sold it to a direct competitor - he didn't spend a couple years building a new product and then put it on the open market, it appears the sale was mostly arranged when he left Waymo. You're right, it's very difficult to enforce those contracts. This one was a little bit too blatant, even for SV.
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May 4, 2017 21:21
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blah_blah posted:I agree. But the issue here isn't those assignment of invention clauses that virtually everyone at every tech company signs. The issue is large-scale theft of intellectual property. There's no point in conflating the two. That's just it, so far there has been no smoking gun. From the article on the previous page: quote:What’s not quite proven yet: That the complex lidar system Levandowski built for Uber was heavily inspired by Waymo-owned patents and trade secrets. Waymo also can’t quite pin down whether Uber employees saw the stolen documents or if those documents moved anywhere beyond the computer Levandowski allegedly used to steal them. (Uber lawyers say extensive searches of their company’s system for anything connected to the secrets comes up nil.) Did a laptop containing the documents ever enter an Uber office? Did Levandowski access the documents for reference while working from home? So far, the evidence is only circumstantial. The payout, the timing, the lack of notice all scream guilt. And this is a civil case, not a criminal case. But right now, the theft hasn't been proven. I think we're agreeing, and I pointed out the distinction, it's just that he has certainly violated the contract, it has yet to be shown that he actually stole anything.
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May 5, 2017 01:28
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blah_blah posted:I think the professor <-> professor stuff is pretty much a non-issue, because most of these companies have a decent chunk of world-class researchers in one place. I studied probability theory in grad school and one of the (say) 5 strongest and most productive research groups in the world was at Microsoft Research. They also had more researchers in that area than all but a few university departments (and in my field a lot of the collaboration that exists is between researchers at different institutions anyways). Strongest and most productive specifically WRT probability theory, or in general? I'd love to hear more about that if you can elaborate.
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May 12, 2017 20:20
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:What is Fyre Festival? I paid literally 0 attention to whatever it was Ja Rule and some dude tried to set up a music fest in the Bahamas. Tickets started at $1250 or something, running up to 5 figures and the whole thing was billed as a luxury event with yoga, massages, AYCE/AYCD, etc. People showed up, nothing was set up, and it devolved into Lord of the Flies due to lack of planning, experience, and infrastructure. Basically a bunch of folks from the Rich Kids of Instagram set got fleeced.
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May 12, 2017 20:52
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Sucks to be Uber. Uber is in deep poo poo. They're big enough that they'll survive, but between this lawsuit and the criminal investigation over Greyball they're going to have a bad year or two. Or more.
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May 15, 2017 19:33
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LanceHunter posted:Those numbers are impressive, especially given how Blue Apron seems to make it nearly impossible to actually leave their service. I've had to go in every six weeks for the last year or so and manually skip the meals for that week (and they make the process of skipping a delivery more cumbersome every six months or so), because actually deleting my account is this ridiculous byzantine process. Who knows how many customers they have who they still consider active who are in a similar scenario. gently caress any subscription service that did this. Oddly enough, I had to end one monthly payment in favor of another at the beginning of the year - I changed my health insurance company from one to another. Oddly enough, I had zero problems with that which came as a shock given every other issue I've had with BCBS over the years.
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Jun 2, 2017 15:02
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WrenP-Complete posted:I like how they just post stuff to CL. What else would they do with it? It's free infrastructure, they don't have to hire any salespeople to sell them to businesses (who, if they're in the market for used monitors with no warranty, are probably looking at CL anyway), and it keeps their overhead low by not building out a showroom. I see tons of used office furniture from failed businesses go on CL. It's the absolute cheapest way to get rid of it.
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Jun 12, 2017 16:57
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fishmech posted:It's more common to put some of the stuff up on eBay and then leave the rest for Craigslist. I dunno - I figure they probably have a warehouse full of stuff as it is. Not that hard to tag everything for inventory, post ads with what's for sale and let people come to you rather than deal with Ebay fees + Paypal fees + shipping + potential chargebacks.
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Jun 13, 2017 03:12
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Baby Babbeh posted:This is essentially Amazon's business plan, has been for a while, and the only question is whether they run out of money before they establish their monopoly on all commerce. Uh, I don't think Amazon is in danger of running out of money any time soon. Or am I misreading this? Edit: Also, remember those Amazon boxes they were touting a few years ago? This would be a good way to buy footprint in a ton of urban areas to place those. Lots of efficiencies if you reimagine the Whole Foods as a local distribution center rather than as a grocery store that does delivery.
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Jun 17, 2017 00:56
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Doc Hawkins posted:An economic event severe enough to bankrupt Amazon will leave us not caring what happens to Amazon. It's more likely in Europe than in the US.
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Jun 17, 2017 02:47
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Azathoth posted:I really don't think it has anything to do with not wanting to eat in a stranger's home and everything to do with food safety. Something that people willing to host can control, but not guests, hence more hosts than guests. This. Food safety is a big deal, and meals you're serving to the public generally need to come from a commercial kitchen. Hosting a pot luck among friends (or where one person does the cooking and everyone else chips in to help cover the cost) is far different from having strangers over to eat, with unknown kitchen conditions, unknown allergies, etc.
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Jun 23, 2017 19:49
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None of this is new, really. A lot of the early CEOs were complete assholes in their own way. Aubrey Chernick, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, even Scott McNealy (though coming from Sun, his company was an early corporate advocate of open source software - that's pretty laudable). Steve Jobs gets a worse rap than most because he was so high profile by his own design, but he was by no means unique.
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Jun 29, 2017 08:42
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Buffer posted:It's a workplace tragedy in three acts featuring some weird choices(like that apparently github put together a social justice league) but come on. Apart from the code review bit, which is profoundly hosed up, she took a single bad performance review that may have been unwarranted and wasn't listened to / respected as much as she'd like / might be appropriate. That last bit isn't exactly an uncommon tale, it's just not normally presented through this lens. "Lack of empathy" is unquantifiable - unless someone is being outright hostile or not responding, differences in communication styles are simply a fact of life. HR/Management should have backed her up with the data scientist, if her initial response was as quoted. Otherwise, "lack of empathy" eventually turns into "you didn't think me or apologize to me for 6 paragraphs for your statement, preempting what you're about to say." Direct communication in a work environment is good. Saying "Thanks" or "I appreciate it" is polite, but not required. And yes, the code review part is completely hosed up. But if her PIP focused on her interpersonal communication and didn't give her concrete feedback on how to improve, it was equally hosed up and simply a way for management/HR to remove what they considered a thorn in their side.
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Jul 7, 2017 03:29
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ShadowHawk posted:At Google at least I've heard several stories of people coming back from them, and even being promoted eventually. Google has been around since 1998, and IPO'd in 2004. While young for such a large company, have had enough time to mature into a company that actually behaves like a real corporation. That's part of why the issues at Amazon are so surprising, it's a larger company that's also been around for a long time, I at least would have expected them to have a more mature organization, and the issues that have been published at Amazon are far less insidious than at places like Uber and Github. Part of developing an inclusive, supportive culture is having enough different businesses/product lines to avoid groupthink or old boy style corporate cultures. When a company has one product, or a couple variants of one product, and 90% of the employees are white, male, and in their 20's/early 30's, it's easy for that environment to develop into one where the 90% becomes convinced of their righteousness, and single out anyone that doesn't agree with them vociferously as an outsider. It's simple exclusion, from idea to skin color to age to gender to politics. And it's not unique to Silicon Valley.
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Jul 7, 2017 08:42
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Arsenic Lupin posted:That, right there. That is what is wrong with the unicorn culture. The sense that you're dancing across an invisible net of other people's belief in you, and that if they stop believing, everybody falls to an icy death. Oracle has a history of playing fast and loose with the rules, and it's been said before but Ellison is so famously an rear end in a top hat that someone wrote a book about it.
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Jul 14, 2017 04:48
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What does "forseeable future" mean in that context? 1 month? 6 months? A year?
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Jul 14, 2017 08:34
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Absurd Alhazred posted:You can outsource most of your HR process, including payroll, to an outside company these days, even as a startup. They'll make sure to get those paychecks out for your on time, even if your money flow is a bit irregular, to a point. There's no excuse for handing that over to your pal, "person I know who will do it for peanuts." It wasn't irregular cash flow though, it sounds like the intern was working for an hourly wage, and so he had to get timesheets in to get paid. That's not unreasonable, what's wrong is that their person who does payroll thought it would be funny to delay his pay, and happened to pick the absolute worst week to do it. In that situation, the intern did nothing wrong until after his paycheck was delayed, and it sounds like the company is too small to keep them separated. This is the kind of call you have to make as an owner/manager, and it's the type of situation that you have to take as a learning experience to make sure it never happens again. There are about a dozen ways this could have been avoided, but now it's too late unless the dude changes his mind. a foolish pianist posted:What did you switch from? We just went from gmail to Outlook, and it's loving terrible. Do you have an actual Exchange server, or are you using Office 365? Or are you just using Outlook as a front end e-mail client for a hosted e-mail?
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Jul 22, 2017 15:37
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Elias_Maluco posted:Gmail is very good (for my needs) except for the search. How could google gently caress that up, its amazing To be fair, search in Outlook is pretty bad too.
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Jul 22, 2017 23:27
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