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MIKarlsen's comments

MIKarlsen | 6 years ago | on: Scrum is fragile, not Agile

I think the challenge with having no process is this: You have to rely on great chemistry and raw talent.

Look at Spotifys videos on their process. Every team is self-driving, because everyone knows how to do stuff. If you work at a company where there is no process, and not every is able to complete the whole task from A-Z, you end up with deadends and people who get stuck. If the culture doesn't encourage knowledgesharing, people end up making crappy solutions.

karles | 6 years ago | on: Have a personal web site

You should make a personal website, and just copy-paste this post onto it. Would be a bold statement!

karles | 7 years ago | on: Homeless, living in a tent and employed: The changing face of homelessness

I don't think giving them money should be about "getting people back on track" or anything similar. It's just to give them money for a beer, a burger or something to ease their day. Personally, I think there will always be people who doesn't fit into society. It's easier if we don't expect them to open a savings account with the 20 bucks we gave them, and just realize that it goes towards getting drunk/getting something to eat to numb the absolute mess their lives might be.

MIKarlsen | 7 years ago | on: Homeless, living in a tent and employed: The changing face of homelessness

I'm a big worrier myself, and these thoughts often get the better of me. I have been unemployed for a couple of months last year, and although I live in a scandinavian country, it was still tough to see others in the same situation struggling.

I think society has a great responsibility in educating citizens correctly. A lot of the people I met had no grasp of technology, or its role in society, which is a big warning-light in my eyes. Everyone is saying "AI and robotics wont take your job", but it absolutely will, as the jobs the new industry creates seems to be STEM-jobs that require long STEM-educations - something not everyone is cut out for.

I feel like we're yet to see the full consequence of technology's role in our society, and I fear that we will end up with a big chunk of people who cannot actively contribute to the workforce.

MIKarlsen | 7 years ago | on: Millennial Men Leave Perplexing Hole in Hot U.S. Job Market

And learning the basics just doesn't seem to cut it anymore. It seems like most enterprise technology builds on older versions of older versions making it more complex. For instance, AI and ML seems like two subject areas that would be impossible for anyone to work professionally with, if they don't have years and years of experience with programming/math/statistics.

karles | 7 years ago | on: Millennial Men Leave Perplexing Hole in Hot U.S. Job Market

I'm just stating the facts. But let me explain how the educational trajectory looks like. Sorry I don't know the correct terms for all the different levels of education. But here goes:

Age 2-6: Daycare/kindergarden

6-16/17: Grade School (folkeskolen)

16/17-19/20: High School (gymnasiet)

19/20-20/23: One or two years off where people work/travel/move out from their parents etc. (as you can see, we're close to the 22 year average here)

20/23-25/28: 5 years of university - add one year for the standard extra interships and you have 6 years of university

Fastest possible way: Start school at 5, skip 10th grade, just straight to High School aged 15, finish high school aged 18, straight to university and study for 5 years (fastest possible degree in the regular system), and you're 23 by the time you get out of the system.

MIKarlsen | 7 years ago | on: Millennial Men Leave Perplexing Hole in Hot U.S. Job Market

Are you asking if it would be feasible for companies to take in well-educated people, and teaching them the programming/dev-craft?

I don't know. But right now, companies are trying to solve the problem in other ways, which is ultimately not addressing their core need.

I just feel like some sort of educational system (bootcamp'ish) would be able to make a good business case for most companies.

MIKarlsen | 7 years ago | on: Millennial Men Leave Perplexing Hole in Hot U.S. Job Market

Where I'm from (Denmark), most people start university when they're 18-22, and then you have to do a bachelors degree (3 years) and a master degree (2 years). Often times, people spend more time on their degrees because they take extra internships. Based on the 50 people I had a some-what close relation to while I did my degree, most of them where 26-27 when they got their masters degree.

You can see a figure from ministry of education here (first figure - it shows the age of the starting student): https://www.dst.dk/pukora/epub/Nyt/2005/NR242.pdf

The title of the chart is translated into "Average age of new students", where the top part addresses bachelors-students from each of the 5 mayor areas (technical, societal etc), while the bottom part of the graph shows the vocational education system here.

After they start, they will use 5 years minimum to get their degrees. Bachelors are worthless in Denmark.

EDIT: I know the first article is from 2004. Here's a 2016 article that states that new students at the University of Copenhagen (largest in Denmark) had an avg. age of 22,7 in 2016, which was a year younger than the avg. age in 2015: https://uniavisen.dk/alderspraesidenter-eller-groenskollinge...

MIKarlsen | 7 years ago | on: Millennial Men Leave Perplexing Hole in Hot U.S. Job Market

"If you get to the point where you’re turning 30, you’ve never held a real job and you don’t have a college education, then it is very hard to recover at that point."

I've raised this point to a fair few of my friends and colleagues recently. I think it is becoming increasingly hard to contribute to society, because everything is so gosh-darn technical.

Companies _scream_ for developers - but not junior developers, or people who they can teach to program - but developers with 5+ years worth of experience.

I think this will only get WAY worse in the future. Unfortunately, I also think it will mean that people who fail to get a job after taking their degree will be worse off than people with little or no education, who has always had a job (no matter the type of job).

So if you're done with college/university (which is when you're around 25-30 y/o in Europe), and you can't get a job, and you can't put your education to use. You're pretty much shit out of luck in most cases. Of course you can always dig yourself out, but doing so would most likely mean working a min-wage job for 8-10 hours a day, and then spending all your free-time and weekends learning a useful skill, which doesn't leave much time for friends or family (or making a family).

MIKarlsen | 7 years ago | on: What's the Use of a Horse's Tail?

Showing someone (or another dog) that you're excited or scared ("tail between his legs") is a very potent social mechanism I think. I don't think it adds much to the motor skills of the dog, besides maybe giving it a tool to keep flies and insects away from the ol' pooper.

MIKarlsen | 7 years ago | on: YC Hackathon without writing code

I don't throw language like this around a lot, but this was actually very inspiring to me.

I'm currently between jobs, and have a hard time figuring out what direction I want to go (and CAN go).

I see myself as a generalist with above-average it-competencies, but I'm not familiar enough with design to be a designer, nor skilled enough with programming to be a developer.

The past few months, I've been thinking that going the designer route might be the smarter career choice for me, as it is an area I have dabbled in before (both professionally and through education). Programming seems to hard a game to play catch-up in.

It seems like learning a visual framework like this would be an efficient way for a designer to create value for the business, both because it's fast, but also because it reduces the workload on the IT-team. I'm wondering if it would be a better idea to master a tool like this, and focus on design-related learning, that it is learning to program almost from scratch (even though it is the better choice in the long run i suppose).

MIKarlsen | 7 years ago | on: Amazon Camper Force

I'm not from the US, so I don't know about that "RV Culture". But if I'm cynical, it sounds like Amazon is looking for people who can't afford to say no (which is why they live in a camper van for starters...), which is unethical in my opinion.

If I'm being optimistic, they're engaging with a community, who actually loves the RV lifestyle, and wants opportunities like this for limited periods, so they can save up for their "next adventure". I just don't know how working 12 hour shifts while living in an RV is called an "adventure". But hey, that's marketing these days - everything should be (over)sold.

My gutfeeling tells me, that the first is more likely to be the case than the latter, which is just another bad mark in the book for Amazon...

MIKarlsen | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work?

Without blowing this out of proportion, I think this can also be a slight case of depression. At least, lack of motivation (perhaps from some sort of "non-joy" in your work-environment and tasks) and "there's just no point in doing it" along with your negative self-thoughts, are all part of depression as an illness.

The "I'm a complete failure"-part resonates with me, and perhaps, it could be something as simple as being so afraid of failing, that you never even try.

I don't know if this is helpful advice at all, but it might give you an idea of what you can do to help yourself (CBT for instance).

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