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stevetursi

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2022) on Thursday March 03, 2022 @01:22PM (#30544652)
Caesars Digital | Functional Scala / Native iOS and Android / React / Others | Remote (states below) | Full-Time

Our primary product technology tenant is that we're strategy led. That is - we're a flat org in which ICs are asked to take the strategies set my management and figure out how to implement them (Semantically, "Shape the Path.") To put it succinctly, where other organizations promise autonomy, we grant authority.

We have a high behavioral bar with new hires, asking that applicants' work history has evidence that they question the status quo, make business decisions without consulting their manager, escalate issues even when unpopular, break up empires, and raise the bar in the organization, all while earning the trust and respect of their team.

Details and open positions here: https://www.builtinnyc.com/company/caesars-digital

Reach out to stursi at caesars dot com if interested.

AZ, CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, LA, MA, MD, MI, MS, MT, NC, NJ, NV, NY, OH, OR, PA, SC, TX, TN, WA, and WV.

Re:Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories on Saturday February 19, 2022 @09:43AM (#30397453)
a slightly-larger-than-normal slice of pecan pie will easily get to 1000kcal. a la mode and you don't even need a normal sized slice.
Re:MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch on Tuesday October 19, 2021 @10:14AM (#28918297)
pure speculation, but I reckon this is due to security concerns. the camera on a laptop is off by default, including when the laptop opens. i for one have always been a little concerned that most phones (android and ios) don't have a "camera on" indicator.
Re:FaceTime is coming to Android and Windows via the web on Tuesday June 08, 2021 @11:23AM (#27436399)
I agree with the arguments (usually made by Apple fans, and I don't mean that as a pejorative) that Apple is probably in their legal rights and that it makes dollars and cents business sense for them to limit iMessage to iOS as much as possible.

But it's still a shitty thing to do. I have a tremendous amount of respect for companies that do things that are contrary to business objectives because they're the right thing to do. In this case, Apple chose to do the shitty thing.

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2020) on Thursday July 02, 2020 @11:52AM (#23714633)
William Hill US | Functional Programmer (Scala) | Jersey City, NJ, USA | ONSITE | Full Time The thing that distinguishes our team (and the reason I chose to work here) is that our CIO is a functional programming evangelist who understands that you can't just hire a team of FP enthusiasts - rather, you hire great engineers interested in being challenged and train them to become FP enthusiasts. We have a formal training program ("Scala U") that will show you basic scala syntax but its real purpose is to train people in how to become functional programmers with a combination of mentorship, pairing, classroom, exercises, and books. He's easy to talk to and super-enthusiastic, and I personally have learned a lot from him.

Here is the job description: https://www.williamhill.com/us/careers/?gh_jid=4465782002

We also have openings in devops, front end, and iOS, and other technical and non-technical roles.

Feel free to send me questions: My hackernews username at gmail.

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2020) on Monday June 01, 2020 @02:15PM (#23381785)
William Hill US | Functional Programmer (Scala) | Jersey City, NJ, USA | ONSITE | Full Time

The thing that distinguishes our team (and the reason I chose to work here) is that our CIO is a functional programming evangelist who understands that you can't just hire a team of FP enthusiasts - rather, you hire great engineers interested in being challenged and train them to become FP enthusiasts. We have a formal training program ("Scala U") that will show you basic scala syntax but its real purpose is to train people in how to become functional programmers with a combination of mentorship, pairing, classroom, exercises, and books. He's easy to talk to and super-enthusiastic, and I personally have learned a lot from him.

Here is the job description: https://www.williamhill.com/us/careers/?gh_jid=4465782002

We also have openings in devops, front end, and iOS, and other technical and non-technical roles.

Feel free to send me questions: My hackernews username at gmail.

Re:The Story of Hertz Going Bust on Monday June 01, 2020 @12:31PM (#23380363)
sorry, but I'm certain she would prefer I didn't.
Re:The Story of Hertz Going Bust on Monday June 01, 2020 @12:30PM (#23380346)
My original post makes it sound like the accenture engineers dropped the ball. That was not my intention. I wasn't personally involved, had already gone on to other things. My impression, in talking to hertz people over the subsequent years, were that the engineers were fine; it was an issue of sales overpromising and resource allocation, as well as incongruities between stakeholders, but that's second and third-hand information, so take that for what it's worth.
Re:The Story of Hertz Going Bust on Monday June 01, 2020 @12:26PM (#23380289)
Can confirm, I have many anecdotes of folks who moved and regretted it, and people who found new local jobs who were grateful. It was gut-wrenching for almost everyone.

Our department was an exception. We got to stay in NJ (they laid us all off two years later.)

Re:The Story of Hertz Going Bust on Monday June 01, 2020 @10:18AM (#23378710)
I am Hertz Alumni, 2011-2016. We had a great group of engineers and product people, many of us far too talented to be in company like what hertz turned into. We were under the leadership of an incredible division head and most of the folks in our group felt a deep sense of loyalty to her. Nearly all of us, including that division head, are gone now, mostly laid off. If you poll any random Hertz alumnus, the story you're likely to hear is "we had a great team and incompetent senior management."

To us, there is a quote in a different bloomberg article from last week [1] which strikes us as accurate. Attributed to Maryanne Keller, who is referred to in this article, it says:

> 'It’s a saga about gross mismanagement,” said Maryann Keller, a longtime auto-

> industry consultant who was on the board of Dollar Thrifty when Hertz acquired

> the company. “It could have been salvaged had he picked the right management,”

> she said, referring to Icahn.'

Icahn lost $1.6b. Thousands of us lost our jobs. But these C-suiters sailed the company to bankruptcy over five years, each of them extracting 7 or 8 figure bonuses. The CIO who laid us all off, for example, received $6.5 million compensation that year [2]. (Sidenote, the work we were doing was replaced with Accenture consultants, who couldn't handle it, screwing up so bad they ended up in court [3].)

One former colleague of mine wrote a post on LinkedIn suggesting Icahn was the unwitting victim of untenable debt situation, and while he may be correct that the debt made it difficult, Icahn can read a balance sheet and he understood the situation.

I can't speak about Marinello's performance, but I agree that the problem dates back to 2014 or even earlier. People have a widespread belief that Frissora was flying too close to the sun, driven by his aggressive personality. Despite his flaws, he had a great team of people who kept the business running, and it wasn't Frissora who fired them all. Nobody, it turns out, was a fan of him. But everyone agrees he was far better than the gang of unusually wealthy miscreants that Icahn replaced him with.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-27/icahn-fil...

[2] https://www.cio.com/article/3404205/how-much-do-cios-really-...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19737070

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2020) on Monday May 04, 2020 @11:50AM (#23069438)
William Hill US | Functional Programmer | Jersey City, NJ, USA | ONSITE | Full Time The thing that distinguishes our team (and the reason I chose to work here) is that our CIO is a functional programming evangelist who understands that you can't just hire a team of FP enthusiasts - rather, you hire great engineers interested in being challenged and train them to become FP enthusiasts. We have a formal training program ("Scala U") that will show you basic scala syntax but its real purpose is to train people in how to become functional programmers with a combination of mentorship, pairing, classroom, exercises, and books. He's easy to talk to and super-enthusiastic, and I personally have learned a lot from him.

Here is the job description: https://www.williamhill.com/us/careers/?gh_jid=4465782002

We also have openings in devops, front end, and iOS, and other technical and non-technical roles.

Feel free to send me questions: My hackernews username at gmail.

Re:Coronavirus and Credibility on Thursday April 09, 2020 @03:50PM (#22826463)
It's true, both were wrong.

It's also true that both sides presume the worst intentions when they say the other side was wrong.

I can't get over the fact, however, that only one side was (and still is) in a position to do something about it. Moreover that one side had access to better intelligence about the severity of the situation, and that one side sowed the seeds of their awful response over the past three years with the various cuts they made.

Re:Ask HN: What are you learning? on Sunday April 05, 2020 @10:17PM (#22790388)
Spanish, and Category Theory

I can't tell yet which is harder. Both are pretty tough.

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2020) on Thursday April 02, 2020 @09:25AM (#22758661)
William Hill US | Functional Programmer | Jersey City, NJ, USA | ONSITE | Full Time

The thing that distinguishes our team (and the reason I chose to work here) is that our CIO is a functional programming evangelist who understands that you can't just hire a team of FP enthusiasts - rather, you hire great engineers interested in being challenged and train them to become FP enthusiasts. We have a formal training program ("Scala U") that will show you basic scala syntax but its real purpose is to train people in how to become functional programmers with a combination of mentorship, pairing, classroom, exercises, and books. He's easy to talk to and super-enthusiastic, and I personally have learned a lot from him.

Here is the job description: https://www.williamhill.com/us/careers/?gh_jid=4465782002

We also have openings in devops, front end, and iOS, and other technical and non-technical roles.

Feel free to send me questions: My hackernews username at gmail.

Re:Apple acquires Dark Sky on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @07:34PM (#22743995)
John Oliver did a really good deep dive on this topic last fall. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGn9T37eR8
Re:Apple acquires Dark Sky on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @07:23PM (#22743880)
I appreciate your effort, I really do, but you'll get a lot farther complaining on HN. Nobody is going to do anything about it here either, but at least here you'll have people that care what you think.
Re:Apple acquires Dark Sky on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @07:15PM (#22743816)
Apple making this exclusive to apple makes me less likely to switch to apple products. No app, including something as beloved as dark sky, is meaningful enough to get me to switch platforms, but if I had any good will towards apple it just went out the fucking window.
Re:Apple acquires Dark Sky on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @07:10PM (#22743758)
I was about to do the same. Frankly, I'm pissed.
Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2020) on Monday March 02, 2020 @07:40PM (#22470704)
William Hill US | Functional Programmer | Jersey City, NJ, USA | ONSITE | Full Time

The thing that distinguishes our team (and the reason I chose to work here) is that our CIO is a functional programming evangelist who understands that you can't just hire a team of FP enthusiasts - rather, you hire great engineers interested in being challenged and train them to become FP enthusiasts. We have a formal training program ("Scala U") that will show you basic scala syntax but its real purpose is to train people in how to become functional programmers with a combination of mentorship, pairing, classroom, exercises, and books. He's easy to talk to and super-enthusiastic, and I personally have learned a lot from him.

Here is the job description: https://www.williamhill.com/us/careers/?gh_jid=4465782002

We also have openings in devops, front end, and iOS, and other technical and non-technical roles.

Feel free to send me questions: My hackernews username at gmail.

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2020) on Monday February 03, 2020 @07:56PM (#22231190)
William Hill US | Functional Scala Engineer | Jersey City, NJ, USA | ONSITE | Full Time The thing that distinguishes our team (and the reason I chose to work here) is that our CIO is a functional programming evangelist who understands that you can't just hire a team of FP enthusiasts - rather, you hire great engineers interested in being challenged and train them to become FP enthusiasts. We have a formal training program ("Scala U") that will show you basic scala syntax but its real purpose is to train people in how to become functional programmers with a combination of mentorship, pairing, classroom, exercises, and books. He's easy to talk to and super-enthusiastic, and I personally have learned a lot from him.

Feel free to send me questions or message me if you're interested.

Job Description:

We bet we can be a great match

When we say cutting edge, we actually mean it. Here, you can work on highly reliable systems with low latency, much like the transactional systems of the best financial institutions, but… with fun included.

About us:

Working with us you’ll be at heart of the technological revolution of one the world’s most trusted betting and gaming companies. We deal with projects ranging from desktop or mobile casinos and betting sites… just to name a few. We process 500 online Sportsbook bets per second each Saturday, that’s the same as orders processed by Amazon UK, on its busiest day of the year. We deal with more than 20 million users daily. Impressed? You can be sure there are many more challenges waiting for you.

Your role in the team:

You are either already proficient in Scala and functional programming or enthusiastic about learning. Your language experience includes any of the following:

Consider applying anyway even if you don't have professional Scala or FP experience. We will seriously consider anyone who passes our technical bar, regardless of how they got there.

A bit more about us

You will become a key member of our Digital hub, which is integral to our brand and success. Whether it's working out the odds on the winners of the Kentucky Derby or the Super Bowl, our work has a direct impact on every customer who places a bet. And putting that experience front and center of everything we do has helped us become a real betting powerhouse in the UK – and now we're bringing that expertise to the US.

We're using agile principles to develop a culture where we champion autonomy, creativity, and originality so that we can keep growing. We code the platform which our odds traders use to update the prices on live events. Making sure our customers have up to the minute in-play chances right there and then. And we really do mean that our teams process 464 bets every single second. Our platforms have to reflect millions of real-time, In-Play sports events, so developing systems that are designed for low latency and high throughput is critical.

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2020) on Tuesday January 07, 2020 @12:57PM (#21982552)
William Hill US | Functional Scala Engineer | Jersey City, NJ, USA | ONSITE | Full Time

The thing that distinguishes our team (and the reason I chose to work here) is that our CIO is a functional programming evangelist who understands that you can't just hire a team of FP enthusiasts - rather, you hire great engineers interested in being challenged and train them to become FP enthusiasts. We have a formal training program ("Scala U") that will show you basic scala syntax but its real purpose is to train people in how to become functional programmers with a combination of mentorship, pairing, classroom, exercises, and books. He's easy to talk to and super-enthusiastic, and I personally have learned a lot from him.

Feel free to send me questions or message me if you're interested.

Here's the job description, copied and pasted from our site:

--

We bet we can be a great match

When we say cutting edge, we actually mean it. Here, you can work on highly reliable systems with low latency, much like the transactional systems of the best financial institutions, but… with fun included.

About us:

Working with us you’ll be at heart of the technological revolution of one the world’s most trusted betting and gaming companies. We deal with projects ranging from desktop or mobile casinos and betting sites… just to name a few. We process 500 online Sportsbook bets per second each Saturday, that’s the same as orders processed by Amazon UK, on its busiest day of the year. We deal with more than 20 million users daily. Impressed? You can be sure there are many more challenges waiting for you.

Your role in the team:

You are either already proficient in Scala and functional programming or enthusiastic about learning.Your language experience includes any of the following:

• Scala (most desired)

• Haskell

• OCaml

• Clojure

• F#

Consider applying anyway even if you don't have professional Scala or FP experience.We will seriously consider anyone who passes our technical bar, regardless of how they got there.

Skills needed:

- You will integrate our application with all required systems and services and provide clean and easy to use API for the front-end part of the system

- You’ll design and develop the business logic and back-end systems of the product

- You’ll decipher existing software systems and be able to hook in application to applicable data sources

Required

You will need to successfully complete a background and drug screen

A bit more about us

You will become a key member of our Digital hub, which is integral to our brand and success. Whether it's working out the odds on the winners of the Kentucky Derby or the Super Bowl, our work has a direct impact on every customer who places a bet. And putting that experience front and center of everything we do has helped us become a real betting powerhouse in the UK – and now we're bringing that expertise to the US.

We're using agile principles to develop a culture where we champion autonomy, creativity, and originality so that we can keep growing. We code the platform which our odds traders use to update the prices on live events. Making sure our customers have up to the minute in-play chances right there and then. And we really do mean that our teams process 464 bets every single second. Our platforms have to reflect millions of real-time, In-Play sports events, so developing systems that are designed for low latency and high throughput is critical.

What it shifts is advertising from expensive media markets with small geographical boundaries (NY, LA) to less expensive ones that have large boundaries (Kansas City, Raleigh.) It works out that, because of the large boundaries, the cost to reach each consumer is far lower.

Moreover, I'd wager that the stumps that stump speeches occur on will go to more places with more concentrated populations - there are more butts within n square miles to put in seats, as well as the most-watched news media.

My opinion is that both outcomes are preferable to stumps AND media going to half a dozen battleground states.

Re:Safer Nuclear Reactors Are on the Way on Sunday July 07, 2019 @10:40PM (#20379522)
I think his point was that, regardless of the chances that these doomsday scenarios could occur, experts on site at the time warned that they would, which is precisely what the show depicted.
Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2019) on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @03:04PM (#20098153)
William Hill US Digital | Multiple Engineering Roles | Jersey City, NJ, USA | FULLTIME | ONSITE | 160-200K | williamhillplc.com

Whether it’s working out the odds on the winners of the Kentucky Derby or the Super Bowl, our work has a direct impact on every customer who places a bet. And putting that experience front and center of everything we do has helped us become a real betting powerhouse in the UK and Nevada – and now we’re bringing that expertise to New Jersey. William Hill is America’s largest Sports Book operator and our award-winning sports betting app allows you to instantly place bets in the palm of your hand, and all of that is completely legal here in New Jersey!

We code the platform which our odds traders use to update the prices on live events. Making sure our customers have up to the minute in-play chances right there and then. And we really do mean that our teams process 464 bets every single second. Our platforms have to reflect millions of real-time, In-Play sports events, so developing systems that are designed for low latency and high throughput is critical.

Currently hiring:

- Senior Software Engineer, Scala/Akka

- Functional Programmer, Clojure/Haskell/Erlang

- Senior DevOps Engineer, AWS/Docker

Email us at [email protected] or if you have questions, feel free to send a note to me personally. Contact info in profile. I’m an engineer here by the way.

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @09:45PM (#20036153)
This is almost as good:

WARNING Do not pull the secondary ejection T-handle with the canopy still in place.

https://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/manual/1/1-199.php

Re:Treat Facebook Like Big Tobacco on Friday May 17, 2019 @04:02PM (#19943024)
Hello, my name is Steve and I'm addicted to Facebook.

It has been 3 months since I deactivated my account.

Kidding aside (I'm not really kidding) In my last year using facebook, I was aware of all the privacy shenanigans, and I saw news articles every day about things like cambridge analytica. None of that mattered. But the thing that actually got me to deactivate my account was realizing that it was all performant. I couldn't keep myself from signaling in every post and comment I made - and I would recognize my own signaling and it drove me crazy. Conveniently, I started a new job in February and couldn't bear being distracted all the time by whatever nonsense was happening there.

Do I miss it? I miss seeing the posts by about 1% (literally) of my facebook friends. Every time something neat or interesting happens I think about posting it on facebook, but I don't. And I do think it has made a big difference at work.

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2019) on Wednesday May 01, 2019 @03:07PM (#19800545)
William Hill US Digital | Multiple Engineering Roles | Jersey City, NJ, USA | FULLTIME | ONSITE | 160-200K | williamhillplc.com

Whether it’s working out the odds on the winners of the Kentucky Derby or the Super Bowl, our work has a direct impact on every customer who places a bet. And putting that experience front and center of everything we do has helped us become a real betting powerhouse in the UK and Nevada – and now we’re bringing that expertise to New Jersey. William Hill is America’s largest Sports Book operator and our award-winning sports betting app allows you to instantly place bets in the palm of your hand, and all of that is completely legal here in New Jersey!

We code the platform which our odds traders use to update the prices on live events. Making sure our customers have up to the minute in-play chances right there and then. And we really do mean that our teams process 464 bets every single second. Our platforms have to reflect millions of real-time, In-Play sports events, so developing systems that are designed for low latency and high throughput is critical. Currently hiring:

- Senior Software Engineer, Scala/Akka

- Functional Programmer, Clojure/Haskell/Erlang

- Senior DevOps Engineer, AWS/Docker

- Data Architect, Hadoop/Redshift

All jobs are listed at https://angel.co/l/2eubtM or email us at [email protected]

I’m an engineer here - if you have questions, feel free to send a note to me personally. Contact info in profile.

Re:Accenture sued over website redesign so bad it Hertz on Friday April 26, 2019 @09:35AM (#19757271)
He was eventually pushed out, last summer. But it's not like he had to give his $7 million back.
My 2012 Subaru needed a new clutch recently. To your point, it was at about 80k miles. Mitigating that point, it was going to cost $2500 in parts and labor to get it replaced at the dealership (and it wasn't all that cheaper at the mom and pops).

Having said that, I also own a Tesla Model 3. It's probably a myth that maintenance is much less. Something about the weight distribution (or maybe it's the sheer torque) causes tires to last less than 30k miles. I'm finding this to be true in my own experience. And a set of tires will set us back nearly $1000.

Lots of great reasons to own a Model 3. Significantly reduced maintenance costs probably isn't one of them.

Re:Accenture sued over website redesign so bad it Hertz on Wednesday April 24, 2019 @01:25PM (#19740706)
People are talking about building in-house talent. I was part of the in-house talent at Hertz. We were executing the strategic initiatives (at some level we came up with them), and we were doing a damn fine job at it.

In early 2016, they fired us all. We were made to train up our replacements (at IBM in India) in order to receive severance packages. Later we found out that Accenture had picked up the initiative. And now the world knows the rest of the story.

All the points made here (ie warning signs, organic initiative) were passionately made at the time to Hertz brass. But someone, no doubt on a golf course somewhere, sold them the idea that they can save millions on paper. And, on paper, they were right: Shortly after firing us all, the CIO received a $7 million bonus. Unfortunately for everyone involved (except the CIO, of course), paper doesn't reflect reality.

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