greatemployee

There is a rational excuse for every bad decision in history.

When the arguments for certain practices that are highly consequential become obvious, simple, predictable, perhaps even tautological, I usually take it as a sign that the whole thing is likely unfounded.

You'd think some company would measure how productive their engineers are in "open office" or strictly on-prem working environments and resolve the matter firmly rather than blindly following the prevailing wives tales, but as far as I'm aware just about every aspect of "management" is not up for consideration.

(Just don't let them catch on to the fact that finding someone's name in Slack is actually pretty easy and that getting things down in writing is always a better idea than relying on people's verbal memory for critical transfer of information, and that the less an engineer is distracted and the more comfortable he is the better he will perform)

And (perhaps more reliably?) Vietnam... Like others have said, I'm skeptical as to how close these numbers are to reality.

More or less true. I think a lot of the early enthusiast web-places have either disappeared or are inactive.

But this is predictable. When hordes of normal people come online, of course Facebooks, Tumblrs, Instagrams are the result. A lot of the people primarily interested in using social services such as these frankly aren't on the web to learn things or explore. They use the web insofar as it resembles or enhances the lives they have outside of it. Even some of my old IRC / BBS friends are basically Tumblr zombies today. This is the nature of things-becoming-popular.

What I'm interested in is, is there any rendezvous for the curious today or are all mediums of communication now machines for self-promotion, passive indulgence, etc.? I want to believe that there is something else, but I think the transformation that occurred, where everyone is given a voice, is something that happens once and only once.

The curious will always be able to discover new things, but for now it looks like these things will be more about the author or human source than about the content or things theirselves. And since the content we find is inextricably tied to the profit of some other personality, we may continue to find content that is less risky, controversial, dangerous, etc..

Objectivity is a precious thing that our cultures don't seem to value today.

> No, I mean "undertake the emotionally harrowing and deleterious task of yet again... (actual content)...

Nah, you mean recounting negative events. And people have been recounting negative events throughout history until you people convinced yourselves that pretending things didn't happen is a mature way to solve anything. You seem to have also convinced yourself that this is merely about satisfying someone's idle curiosity, which is IMO a dumb interpretation of all this.

> ...there's definitely a conversation to be had about some of the ways that those "liberal infants" approach problems of inequality and injustice

* perceived problems of inequality and injustice. I agree, there is a conversation to be had about the unreasonable sensitivity and generally infantile manner in which social justice warriors / liberal arts majors behave.

> but I think it's really funny that you use an isolated pseudonym that can't be traced back to you

Really? I don't find it very funny. I'm not making legal accusations about anyone. Why is my identity relevant?

Is that all you took away from this? I'm skeptical that you actually read it all. I think more attention is paid to CIA involvement and the sketchy activities of Tor leadership than to J. Applebaum.

But I agree that the best strategy, assuming there was malfeasance, is probably not to hold Tor authorities accountable in this way.

I think by "relive" you mean "recount." People seemed to be capable of recounting negative events before the rise of safe spaces and micro-aggression and whatever hog crap liberal infants have cooked up lately. Yeah, how about no.

I see this sort of argument a lot and I don't know how true it is.

Is it /really/ true that the best contributors are so sensitive? In my experience, these days it's actually the worst contributors or those who contribute not at all who are the most sensitive and liable to throw in the towel.

I'm sympathetic to your view but there is another risk that by overmoderating or catering to the most sensitive of contributors, HN will be left with non-interesting content, or controversial opinions will be silenced.

The best way to know for sure is to have someone who is not you, and who is not a potential employer, call each of your references and pretend to be reference-checking.

I sympathize with the author. I have been through this as well. I'm still going through this, really.

I've been rejected many times. And every time, I come away from the process annoyed and disappointed, but certain that I would have been useful to them had they hired me. I research companies thoroughly before going into interviews, and don't waste time interviewing for positions that I don't think I'd be interested in / qualified for.

I also have decent GitHub activity, handful of open source projects that demonstrate my abilities. When I started my new job search I assumed that this mattered, but in my experience it really doesn't. I still get asked extremely basic questions that I'd hoped my GitHub would eliminate. In some instances the company that rejected me had some open source projects, and it made me feel better about myself to see their poor code quality.

Nevertheless, I am also starting to have doubts about the industry. I've wasted a lot of time on take-home challenges, introductions, technical phone screens, on-site interviews, etc. to be rejected without explanation. As an introvert, it's all very exhausting. Why should I, as a computer programmer, have to be an amazing socialite that my colleagues would like to vape & play air hockey with? I just want to work on interesting problems. I'm not stimulated by extravagant team lunches or interrupting meetings to play with the company dog. I'm not stimulated by fancy windows and games and snacks and toys. I'm happy to have technical discussions all day long, but I really don't want to work in a frat house.

I feel like there's a lot of pressure from the industry to be someone I'm not. Also, it seems like the Joel Spolsky idea about only hiring exceptional programmers (at the expense of risking a merely /good/ hire) has seriously penetrated the industry, making the system highly risk-averse in terms of hiring. I feel like no amount of prior job experience or open source work will make a difference. Every time I interview, it's a clean slate, and if I don't nail _everything_ it's a certain no-hire. Even if I did well in prior interviews with the company, they simply won't risk it. I would really like to know what the reasoning is, but they never provide feedback.

I will say that I've been hardened by the experience. I'm better at pitching myself, making appointments, talking to people in a structured way, preparation. I think if any startup founders lack experience as sales(wo)men, there's plenty of opportunity to dial-in your skills by pretending to be a job candidate strictly for practice.