thefastlane's comments

how dare you emit an utterance that amounts to anything other than deification of our future self-driving overlords and the peter-theil-worshipping engineers who unleash them upon us!

there will be (many) times when, for your own emotional/mental sanity, you have to let go of attempting to comprehend someone else's behavior, and just get on with your life.

unfortunately, not as feasible when it's an online assessment, but i appreciate where you're coming from.

yes, praise lord bezos and the rest of the monied elites for the scraps of sustenance which they deign to toss at the hoi polloi.

"A business is just a business and will get rid of you as soon as it can, so you do the same."

I agree wholeheartedly. even nonprofits, etc., tend to be helmed by folks that think purely in terms of financial statements, etc.

in their eyes, you are nothing more than a line item on a spreadsheet. everyone above you on an orgchart effectively has the power to have you ousted. you, of course, have no such reciprocal power over them.

one key takeaway from this observation: don't live paycheck to paycheck -- it's tempting to buy nice stuff with all this money you're suddenly earning... but don't do it. get serious about your finances now. first priority is to save up buffer funds (six months minimum). don't let their power to fire you turn into the power to seriously wreck your life. be proactive in taking care of yourself, you family, and your career.

and as has been said elsewhere, plan to make a jump to a new firm every 2 to 4 years or so, that's the best way to build up your earning potential.

do i sound cynical? hope for the best but plan for the worst.

good call, thanks for clarifying the librarian was suspended, not fired.

But you create a false dichotomy between books no one checks ou' and books with useful and relevant information. if a book doesn't get checked out for, say, a year, is that an indication that it contains no useful information? on what basis?

i'd go further and say this is not a case of flawed metrics but flawed ideology. i don't want my tax dollars to fund the book-equivalent of redbox. i want my tax dollars to fund the preservation and archiving and availability of knowledge, regardless of how 'popular' an algorithm says it is.

granted, a library cannot hold infinite books. but i'd take the curation of a librarian over an algorithm any day of the week.

> "why not just dual boot"

it is the employer's responsibility to provide you with basic things like a computer, a chair, a desk, etc.

spitfire's advice is right on.

also, this 'startup' is not in good shape if they can't provide you with the tools you need to do your work. it sounds like a sinking ship, and you should simultaneously be preparing your exit strategy asap.

wow, the librarian was fired over trying to keep books in the library. sounds like a deleted scene from Idiocracy.

another example of corporate ideology and management-theory snake oil wreaking havoc on a research institution.

agreed. think in terms of game theory -- if you can hustle your way out of there, you could be saving yourself a lot of emotional wear/toll.

i'd like to think i could tolerate a sizable amount of opaque politics and purposelessness if it came with a 300,000k/year comp package.

moving beyond entry-level is about learning to do your job without any handholding. this usually doesn't take that long.

but any title progression beyond that depends on getting good at navigating the politics of your work environment. you won't get far without people skills. banks actually do a good job of mapping out what this looks like for analysts coming in, in terms of leadership skills etc expected for different titles. technical organizations, however, tend to leave their staff in the dark about this sort of thing -- which is a political move in itself, i suppose.

no, don't.

i think it would look pretty strange on a resume. if you have a compsci degree, you should already know how to write software, which is what a bootcamp would teach you.

i don't know the details of your resume/career thus far, but you might want to think about how to present your career such that there are no gaps. point is, HR types need to whittle down very large stacks of resumes, and 'gaps' are an easy way to do that.

keep applying and going to meetups, and working on your programming skills. it isn't easy, but you'll snag a job eventually!

the people interviewing you are human beings. it sounds like you're treating it a bit too much like an SAT test.

consider that a technical interview is also a behavioral interview, in a sense.

> "The biggest problem in spreading lisp nowadays is the fragmentation of the documentation."

Is it though? I think the biggest problem is employment prospects -- it's just not used enough in industry. I have used a lisp professionally, and I am of the opinion that that opportunity was a one-time thing career-wise for me. these days, I can't justify spending time on anything but Java or C++ in terms of my career trajectory. would like to hear others' thoughts though.

just dive in. the water's fine. :) whether you're 24 or 94.

and besides, you shouldn't make life decisions based on the likelihood of whether or not you will win a nobel prize...

edit, one more thing: being a programmer and being a scientist are not necessarily the same thing. are you considering a research career in academia? then you should consider it -- you are 24, you can pretty much go any direction you want career-wise at the moment. but read up on the tradeoffs of doing a phd and going into academia -- there are definitely tradeoffs; comments here on HN as well as articles on chronicle.com and elsewhere.

without a DOI there's nothing to discuss. these news briefs are not useful; we need the actual paper.

i would love to dive into this further (both the science itself, and how we cross the bridge from science to policy), can you recommend any resources or papers (DOI if possible)?

i don't quite understand the details of your situation, but, in general, a few thoughts:

- the best way to get a serious raise is to jump companies. generally, you will build up earning power much faster by moving to a new company every few years.

- if you want to ask your current employer for a raise, don't ask for a raise until you have a BATNA -- that is, a job offer in hand from another company (or you are quite certain you can procure one in a short amount of time). if you current employer says no, you have to be ready to jump ship. this isn't about an ultimatum -- i don't know that telling them about your job offer is necessary -- depends on how you want to handle it -- but it's something you need to have for yourself. if they say no, do you really want to stick around?

- woah, no benefits? wtf. definitely jump ship asap. that is not normal. (perhaps you are on your spouse's policy?)

"I am grateful to them" -- you need to move on from this attitude. i'm not suggesting being cocky or contentious in any way, but you need to think of yourself as a professional, and take care of yourself and your career.