brnstz

Ally

The path you're currently on is the "IC path." You'll need to take a look at the "manager's path" to grow those other skills: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-managers-path/97814...

Worse is Better: https://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html

Public Static Void, Rob Pike: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kj5ApnhPAE

Ask a question that has more than 1 right answer (and also more than 3 right answers). To be honest, I do the "cultural" fit while I do the "technical" interview.

How would you approach solving <insert some problem>? Dig into their solution for its technical merits, downsides, pitfalls, etc. But, more importantly, pay attention to how they react when they are challenged, whether they overcomplicate things or whether they hand-wave around real problems. Do they know when to say "it depends" or "I don't know"?

You can get a "right" answer and still "fail" the test. My feedback will basically be, "This person is smart and I can't justify saying 'no' but..."

The "cultural" question is "Do you want to work with this person?" So try working with them not at them.

If you create a show with the set design of Roseanne or even the Cosby Show in 2016, you're missing out on opportunities for product placement:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2012/04/brett-ratner-...

The logic is, "Well, I need to have a car in this movie anyway. Why not get a free car instead of paying for one, and in fact, the manufacturer will pay me to place their brand new car?"

The good news is more art is created at a lower cost. Great.

But the bad news is you perpetuate the idea that everyone has a new car (or new kitchen or new 3000 square foot house or whatever) all the time, no matter what their financial situation would be like in reality. This is especially insidious when there is easy consumer credit.

Here's a scene of a doctor buying a car from 1987:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKMlx5p6n8k#t=1m58s

The premise, if you don't bother to watch, is he doesn't want the car salesman to know his job, because then he won't get a good deal.

The quaint part is that 30 years ago, a doctor and lawyer raising a family in New York City were considered almost unimaginably rich by TV standards. Now they would be "middle class."

The sad part is it would be hard to justify a scene like this on a modern prime time TV show. "So, we're going to have a car in this scene? Great! I'll call up Ford. Wait, but what do you mean the car salesman would overprice the car? Don't you know they're running 0% APR or $2000 cash back for President's Day?"

Sure, there are shows that try hard to be more authentic. But for every Breaking Bad, there are 10 spinoffs of lawyer / doctor / detective shows where the characters live in a bubble of perpetual newness the article describes.

And even Breaking Bad did its share of product placements: http://www.bustle.com/articles/5963-how-breaking-bad-product...

Good question. I don't know of any books, though they're probably out there. You could look at the table of contents and google most of the diagnoses and find more readable stuff online.

* Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5

Software engineering in particular attracts some extreme personalities. There are elements of narcissism, OCD, borderline, avoidance, etc. in every organization, even if it would not necessarily warrant a diagnosis. People have irrational motivations. This is often ignored in the rational business of software.

It's a question that can be done in any language and isn't especially difficult in a shell or scripting language. Every attempt I'd seen (except that one) in Java or C++ was a failure given the time limitation.

It is more of a test of "can you pick the right tool for the job, given limited time and resources?" In this case, a machine gun was chosen to squash an ant. A risky move, but if you can do it, then great.

(Disclaimer: I'm a former engineer at NYT and was a Go proponent there.)

The reality of the situation at NYT is that every dollar counts. Go is an effective language that enables a programmer to do both "scripting" and "real" tasks without switching between different environments. The email system described sends more email than many companies that only send email send, and have many more employees working on said system. It is one of the few systems at NYT that pays for itself with zero doubt.

The speaker did not know Go before being hired by NYT, and famously solved a Java programming task in his interview without an IDE and barely a typo (the only time I'd ever seen it done successfully, some people can't even run javac or vim).

It certainly doesn't hurt in hiring to say that you get to program Go, but filtering out "boring" engineers is not a chase of "coolness". It is seeking out engineers who want to take a risk and want to be productive.

Where do you live? I am genuinely curious. This is a local issue, and you are speaking in global platitudes. If no one near you wants to bike, fine. Make everything an interstate. But if there are bikes all around... it appears someone near you does want to bike.

I doubt the bike trails near you are even a minimally spanning tree of every place a person needs to go.

Most roads in the world were not originally built for cars:

http://www.citylab.com/commute/2012/04/invention-jaywalking/...

I think that's a great idea.

> Some say it is depression, but would I want a medication to fix what is obviously a lifestyle problem?

Medication is not the only solution to depression. The internet is a bad therapist. Consider a real one.

If only it were updated daily: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/

A command line utility can form the basis of an editor plugin. Go/vim users typically run `gofmt` on save, and the reformatted code appears within the editor.

Laws are not perfect. Sometimes you need a revolution (i.e., a mob).

Why is it not credible? That scene illustrates a point even more abstract than the one we are discussing.

If the result is the same (the prisoner dies), does it matter whether a legal authority performs the killing, or whether a mob does? I think it does.

You may not agree with the legal authority's process or laws, but at the very least it is written down.

Mob justice is not law.

For an illustration of this, check out the very first scene of the TV series Deadwood. There's a lynch mob outside the sheriff's office, and they want to kill the person in the jail. The sheriff fends them off so he can legally hang him instead.

The creator originally wanted to do a series on ancient Rome, about the birthplace of civilization. The studio wanted a Western. He said, oh, perfect, that works, too.