Tech Nightmares: Ghostline the flux

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How many quarters after Q1 2016 till Marissa Mayer is unemployed?
	1 or fewer
	2
	4
	Her job is guaranteed; what are you even talking about?

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Zenefits CEO stepped down today after allegations they were using unlicensed brokers to sell insurance

# ¿ Feb 9, 2016 04:00

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 03:20

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Paypal's CTO stepped down today after disappointing performance.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2016 04:01

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Yelp's CFO stepped down today after a failure to increase revenues to keep pace with increasing expenses.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2016 04:02

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

It was the walking clinical standard for autism Paul Graham and he said it was easy for founders who looked like Zuckerberg to fool him, presumably because he was still sad about missing out on FB

# ¿ Feb 11, 2016 16:53

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

blowfish posted:

actual silicon valley startups don't like the series, guess why

it's basically a documentary

# ¿ Feb 11, 2016 19:59

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

# ¿ Feb 24, 2016 23:45

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Doc Hawkins posted:

You tell your next employers you can start working there in a month or two.

More than once I have quit and then returned to the same company (with no intervening employment) just to get a sabbatical.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 01:25

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Arsenic Lupin posted:

Furthermore, if you stay too long at a company (barring a ridiculous success like Google or Facebook) there's a definite taint of "why didn't anybody else want to hire him/her?" Staying at a known sinking company is very bad for the resume; people are saying in press interviews right now that they wouldn't hire anybody with Yahoo as their last job, because the assumption is that they're losers or they would have gotten out years ago.

I disagree with you about the 50+ thing (I think the way the industry has grown there just aren't very many 50+ programmers to hire when compared to the masses of 25 year olds you can hire) but this is totally true. Staying somewhere longer than three years is career death unless you are at a director level or higher.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 07:15

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

LeJackal posted:

I wonder what rea$on$ people might have for being unable to do internship$. $ome people have trouble $ecuring the opportunity in the fir$t place.

Programming internships are almost universally paid at close to market rate. You can expect to make ~20k for 4 months at Google/FB/Apple etc

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 17:07

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Arsenic Lupin posted:

Yes. That totally sucks. The deal used to be (decades ago) that companies hired inexperienced employees, they trained them, and then the employees stayed for several years afterward. Then companies stopped being loyal to their employees, and the employees returned the favor. The other catch you're dealing with is that companies are starting to look at new programmers' github checkins on open-source projects and prefer those pre-tested coders. The ability to donate time to open source is also a luxury item, of course.

"Google, Facebook, Apple" is not "almost universally". Those are the most desired employers, and contrariwise those are employers willing to spend money to get the most desired graduates. Furthermore, I used to work at one of the most desired employers, and I know for a fact that at the time I worked there, you had to have gone to one of a specified set of colleges to have a chance of getting an offer. Again, not everybody can afford to go to the big name colleges.

I note also that Google notoriously, until quite recently, required all candidates to submit their transcripts. Vint loving Cerf was asked to submit a transcript. This prioritizes education over experience, which again tends to favor the young. No, Vint isn't young, but who wouldn't want to hire him?

I sympathize with all of these points as they are all true to some extent. However, lawyers and doctors put in 90 hour weeks as students/residents/associates in order to 'earn' their high salaries as attendings/partners. Lawyers and doctors who want to just work 40 hours a week from the day they graduate basically don't exist. Programming is not that different. If you want to work 40 hour weeks and not even think about programming on the weekends/in the evenings that is fine, but you are going to be a less desirable candidate employee than someone who works 40 hour weeks and puts in a further 20 working on professional development. It doesn't have to be open source contributions. It could also be things like reading groups, networking events, research, side projects, etc. Anything that demonstrates that you have genuine interest and ability.

As for internships, they exist outside the big silicon valley companies. I work for a startup based in Toronto and we pay our interns $65k prorated over the time they work for us. We also have trouble sourcing interns so I assume other companies are making internship offers competitive to ours.

Google's hiring process is bullshit, no one is going to argue that. They also pay enough that they can easily hire despite that.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 19:26

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

red19fire posted:

Is it safe to say that 'going viral' is circling the drain? Like the local news always starts their fluff stories with 'In a viral video released earlier this week...' and it's some video with 500k views that I've never heard of. What's like the cutoff point for making money on youtube? Because this article warms my black heart.

I don't know what the situation is like now, but I have friends who are friends with a niche youtube 'star' with about a million and a half followers and he was grossing $200k a month last year. He's not even in the top 50 in his niche, either.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2016 04:54

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

shrike82 posted:

I was too young to experience the pricking of the first tech bubble. Any old-timers who were in SV at the time have any anecdotes about the time and how it compares to now?

i showed up for work at my dotcom v1.0 job to find an office stripped of furnishing. my manager was at his desk but no one else was. he told me if i wanted an aeron or a printer i had better grab one before my badge stopped working later that day. i wish i had kept the aeron and the ibm laptop i liberated

# ¿ Mar 27, 2016 23:26

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

WarpedLichen posted:

How is it really worse than what software the modern financial system is currently doing in terms of efficiency and scalability? I don't own any bitcoin or anything but it doesn't seem like there's really a much better way of storing chains of transactions, unless you're talking about getting rid of the peer to peer aspect.

the blockchain as used by bitcoin is a really terrible distribute ledger. it's throughput is terrible, 'transactions' commit only once every 10 minutes and there is no way to tell if the current view of the chain is authoritative (that is, it is always vulnerable to the chain being rewound and authority changing) which also means writes can never be acknowledged. the only way to confirm a write is to wait until your write is old enough you have reasonable certainty it won't be rewound

is a less specific distributed ledger useful? yes, of course, which is why we have used them for longer than bitcoin has been around. if distributed ledgers catch on they'll be the ancestors of distributed logs like pacifica and kafka and trust chains like certificate authority

# ¿ May 22, 2016 06:35

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Gail Wynand posted:

Maybe they've decided they don't need more. Lack of a recent funding round isn't evidence of anything on its own.

their cap sheet is dirty as hell. they can't raise any more money

# ¿ May 23, 2016 04:23

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Absurd Alhazred posted:

I am apparently dumb and don't know the difference between preferred stocks and dirty term sheets. Basically:

I mean, I've read somewhere that it means that there are preferential treatment provisions in the investment contract with someone which makes it practically impossible to get anyone else to invest in the firm later, but I don't know the details.

that is what dirty term sheet means, but preferred shares aren't dirty on their own. it's when they're combined with ratchets (triggers that grant more stock to certain shareholders), guaranteed lower bounds on return at IPO, opportunities to convert preferred shares to common at a premium or just straight cash out in future funding events, veto over mergers/buyouts and other provisions that divorce the face value of the stock from their actual value that is dirty

companies with dirty term sheets have trouble raising future (smart) money because it's difficult or impossible to determine the actual value of what you are investing in

# ¿ Jun 2, 2016 05:32

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

i turned down an offer for ~$205k in total comp ($130k base salary, $30k signing bonus, $45k in rsus annually) from a mid tier sv startup because i felt they lowballed me and i am by no means an elite developer

# ¿ Jun 17, 2016 02:59

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Analytic Engine posted:

What position were you seeking? Would you still be a single contributor at that pay?

yeah, it was an individual contributor role but it was the top of their scale

# ¿ Jun 17, 2016 03:21

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Analytic Engine posted:

Are those numbers only base salary? They seem low for big companies.

companies don't hire h1bs because they are good

# ¿ Jun 17, 2016 16:06

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Analytic Engine posted:

Glassdoor and those H1B sites seem pretty similar. Is Glassdoor also stating base salaries? For example, many companies in NYC are paying ~$120K for specialist front-devs according to both. Would that be the same base in SF? Or is 120 the total comp in NYC and then SF blows it out of the water

glassdoor is all user submitted. it tends to skew low in my experience, at least for the west coast

$120k for entry level webdev seems about right for nyc. sv is similar, but the big companies will offer more

# ¿ Jun 17, 2016 17:26

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Solkanar512 posted:

I'm really surprised that the grocery stores didn't notice something was up, given the amount of trend analysis they perform on purchases.

i work at a startup in this market and retailers and vendors (especially vendors) have almost zero ability to do any kind of analysis on trends like this. we have gigantic multinational customers that are amazed we can even aggregate sales by product category or by arbitrary labels. their in house analysis is interns and new grads making $30k and working with garbage excel spreadsheets if they have any in house analysis at all

# ¿ Aug 8, 2016 19:27

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

ocrumsprug posted:

If there isn't a rolling intern manually populating the sheet with the weekly numbers, this would be a pretty sophisticated setup.

~~~

If you can come up with a data management solution that can

1) quickly (cheaply) integrate with custom built sales databases,
2) provide a ready made analytics package that can be used to easily build BI queries,
3) and can populate a pivot table in Excel with that information.

You probably have a $50 billion idea that your sales team will only be able to capture $30 million from, and most of that will be from point 3.

this is so depressingly true. we spend 80% of our development resources on a front end to our ETL pipeline no one uses. like 95% of our users just use our 'export to excel' feature

also 'emailing around an excel file' is pretty sophisticated as far as the industry goes. we have one customer that is a major fashion brand you have guaranteed owned something from and they decide production targets based on meetings where they get together and debate how much they 'feel' something will sell. they have no analytics at all apart from a pilot project with us they haven't rolled out yet

# ¿ Aug 8, 2016 22:35

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

exploding mummy posted:

Discord's business model is to sell cosmetic skins to gamers.

i interviewed with them and i think their business model is actually exploiting their employees

# ¿ Aug 14, 2016 05:23

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Gail Wynand posted:

Aren't there lots of rumors about Thiel secretly funding alt-right/dark enlightenment poo poo?

is it a secret? he pretty openly supports humanity plus and the singularity institute, ground zero for the so called dark enlightenment

# ¿ Aug 27, 2016 16:31

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

literally the only interview question i have asked or been asked that seems predictive of competence at all is 'tell me about a problem you solved and how you solved it'. i work with a company full of people who have read every paper and can rebalance every tree and they need to be dragged by the nose through every single problem

# ¿ Sep 22, 2016 16:56

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Subjunctive posted:

My favourites included "what was the hardest part of that to test?" and "if you could revisit one design decision about the project, what would it be?" (Plus follow-on "why?" and such, obviously.)

yeah obviously that question is just to start a discussion, but you learn world's more about a candidate via a friendly conversation about problem solving and post mortem and ideas for improvement than you do from seeing them do fizzbuzz on a whiteboard

you are probably slightly more prone to 'talk a good game' people who can't actually program in practice but those people are obvious once you get them in office and you can just get rid of them. the worst people to hire are the mediocre people who just barely clear the bar and are minimally productive but inertia/empathy prevent you from addressing them appropriately. i want to hire all people who are either clearly terrible or good

i went to a conference where there was a panel discussion on how to screen candidates and every single panel member (all of whom were from 'name' companies) talked about how critical it is that you avoid bad hires because they can do so much damage. all i learned is that those 'name' companies have loving atrocious management who can't reasonably control their employees access to critical paths and who are allergic to firing. how hosed is the company culture if you have to invest so much time and effort into vetting candidates? tons of companies seem to have terrible hire rates. how is it not cheaper and more effective to hire early and fire early?

# ¿ Sep 22, 2016 18:33

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Subjunctive posted:

What would you say is Github's major technical innovation?

uhhh they have a graphql api??

# ¿ Oct 31, 2016 18:36

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

yes. they launched with only webapps you could 'install' by adding a shortcut

the app store was announced the same time as the 3g i believe

# ¿ Nov 1, 2016 22:25

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

people who think uber is going to replace private car ownership for 90% of the population are probably like 99% likely to think they'll be in the 10% who have their own private self driving car despite uber's obsoleting private car ownership

relying solely on uber to get around is a miserable experience that i can't imagine would be any better without human drivers. it's alright for infrequent use like getting home from the bar or not having to walk to the train station when it's pouring rain but it's never ever gonna replace mass transportation and private vehicle ownership

# ¿ Dec 3, 2016 23:52

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

blah_blah posted:

I've done it for 3 years in SF and it's pretty great -- here. It's both surprisingly cheap (less than $2k/year for me) and incredibly convenient in a city that is geographically small and where parking is extremely pricey and difficult to find. It would not be pretty great in the South Bay, to say nothing of any city that is either substantially larger or has a substantially lower supply of drivers (basically everywhere).

at $2k a year even at about $5 a trip that's barely more than one trip per day. that's infrequent use

you're not replacing car ownership with uber you just live in an area where you can get away with rarely using a car

move to the suburbs, get married and have a couple kids and now you are looking at an order of magnitude increase in your uber bill. god forbid you live more than a handful of miles from your job or school or walmart. that's the reality for the majority of the population

# ¿ Dec 4, 2016 03:17

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

right, i'm not arguing that uber or something like it won't exist in the future, just that the idea that it can replace car ownership for a majority of the world is ludicrous

# ¿ Dec 4, 2016 03:36

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

yahoo were an ad platform powerhouse in the early days of the commercialized web. adwords absolutely destroyed them

# ¿ Dec 10, 2016 21:12

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Gail Wynand posted:

Credit where credit is due though, when it comes to cloud computing platforms Google is giving AWS a run for their money these days, and they have a lot of people's attention.

they really aren't. aws market share continues to increase. gce is a blip in comparison

# ¿ Dec 14, 2016 22:36

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

RandomPauI posted:

Off topic, but any advice for how I can marry a Space Doctor?

move to galveston, dayton or rochester (mn). those are the only civilian space medicine residency programs in the usa and they're your best best for meeting a space doctor who is single

# ¿ Dec 27, 2016 23:23

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

GreyjoyBastard posted:

...Why the fuckballs would they put anything in Dayton, never mind this?

it's colocated with wright-patterson air force base

the one in galveston is next to nasa

rochester is the mayo clinic who i guess just need to have every residency

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 23:48

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

namaste faggots posted:

lean in is officially dead.

good. lean in was victim blaming bullshit

if companies want better diversity they need to put diverse people in positions of power and actually let them exercise that power. a token minority/woman in your c-suite isn't going to do poo poo if they only serve at the pleasure of the usual suspects

# ¿ Jan 23, 2017 04:17

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

blah_blah posted:

This is pretty good if you look at exactly how the current system fails. Add an exemption for postdocs/academics and one or two other occupations, and you're probably there.

it's bad if you think h1b's should be used to bring in high achievers in diverse fields to drive economic expansion and it's bad if your primary concern is wage suppression of american workers but it's good if you're facebook, oracle, google, etc and you need bodies for your code mill

# ¿ Jan 27, 2017 01:15

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Arsenic Lupin posted:

Actually, it's good if your primary concern is wage suppression of American workers, because it means you can't bring people in solely because they're cheap. Some of these people will just be outsourced to India, of course, but at least Indian workers won't be being imported to replace Americans -- this is happening at the UCs, for instance.

they're still cheap relative to who they are replacing. a developer at google or fb can make $200-300k pretty easily. they can bid $150k on h1bs to put to work optimizing ads, starving out industries that can't afford to meet that $150k and put a bunch of high earning americans out of work

i think h1bs should definitely go to high achievers/high earners but assignment should go by relative pay within a field/industry. if you're not paying your h1bs more than your american workers someone else should get a shot at those visas to bring in productive foreigners that america actually lacks

# ¿ Jan 27, 2017 03:09

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

cowofwar posted:

If a men's jacket cost $60 and a women's jacket cost $100 then the cost of jackets is $80. Providing something for only ~~half~~ 97% of your workforce is worse than providing nothing at all.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2017 16:08

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

if you auction (or set a high minimum) you screw over industries that rely on h1b's to bring in literally irreplaceable labour (like highly specialized researchers in non glamour science fields)

an auction sounds good but it would just mean google/fb/oracle/salesforce replace highly paid americans with foreigners making the new auction price/h1b min

# ¿ Mar 2, 2017 07:01

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 03:20

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

As I was reminded earlier, there's a different visa for literally irreplaceable labor. And we should of course be making the visa process way more accessible in general but a lot of things should happen.

O1 is for like justin bieber and sidney crosby, not a dude researching hidden states of matter or whatever

i'm all for visa/immigration reform, but just being like 'let's just auction off h1b's!' isn't even a start

# ¿ Mar 2, 2017 07:35

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Tech Nightmares: Ghostline the flux

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