throwawaytoday5's comments

throwawaytoday5 | 6 years ago | on: How to Find New Music

w.cd had the best recommendation system for music and audio equipment. The communities that tried to take it's place after don't come close.

It's a shame because I don't know where to talk about it anymore. r doesn't come close, at least not yet. The community music collages on w.cd were unreal.

throwawaytoday5 | 6 years ago | on: The Real Class War

Not too mention, at least in America, the vast majority of American lives are far worst off than they were in the 70s, 80s, or 90s. Making smart phones and personal computers just made rich people richer.

throwawaytoday5 | 6 years ago | on: Ask HN: How do I understand the results of my job search?

When I interview candidates who mention github contributions or courses they've created/taught or talks they've given I never have time to look at it. I'm literally told we're bringing someone on site maybe a day or two in advance, mostly it's day of. I don't have much time to personally comb over their resume sadly.

If you can bring this up during the interview I'd greatly appreciate it otherwise don't assume these things (open source contributions, blog posts, talks) will help you get interviews. What they may give you is the ability to network with people who are hiring which gets you an onsite.

throwawaytoday5 | 6 years ago | on: Today’s Top Tech Skills

I've work for large national ISP where they are heavily trying to create a new series of network engineering tools (device discovery, adding new ARs with ease, upgrading existing devices, pragmatically change thru-puts between regions based on load, etc).

Most of the backends for these types of tools would explicitly be done in Java. Why did they chose Java? Mostly because they would staff entire teams with H1Bs and dump them after 5 years. The directors of these projects would only hear about "buzzwords" surrounding the latest tech if they themselves went to conferences or happened to luck out if the project managers they hired had varied experience.

Oddly enough, there's a lot of greenfield work being done using Scala at Verizon and Comcast. But from my direct experience, it's entirely dependent on the team. The more the team doesn't rely on contractors the more likely they are to use niche tech.

throwawaytoday5 | 6 years ago | on: Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?

It's not just California, it's every state and every city in the US. People have an aversion to public works projects often crying about taxes or how the service is useless or not good enough. We have a political system where one major party (out of two) decries any public spending that might help people who aren't millionaires/billionaires/corporations.

Is it any wonder when you have evil groups of people spending hundreds of millions of dollars to tell people that they should vote against their interests?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-pub...

throwawaytoday5 | 6 years ago | on: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

IME no.

This is going to be an extremely cynical take but most software jobs (>80%) are basically the same. That goes for the companies as well, we aren't as unique as we think; and the companies that are unique or doing unique work aren't exactly having trouble finding employees (FAANG vs nearly everyone else).

If you want an employment as a beginner apply to as many postings as possible. Only do research for companies once they want to talk to you, anything else is a waste of time. It also takes very little time filling out job applications (outside of obnoxious companies that ask lots of behavior Q), it should less than 10 minutes to fill out job apps.

IDK how to feel about cover letters, every company I've worked at (startups, national ISP, to massive insurance companies) have stated they never read cover letters sent. They just want to make sure candidates have all the keywords on their resume before even talking (this part is largely automated away).

I have a basic cover letter that explains what I'm doing at my current job and how I'd like to work at $company doing $unique_stuff. Basically my cover letter is 90% the same between job apps, but I change the intro paragraph to match the title, company, and job description.

But as a beginner or moving to a new city where you know no one, apply to everything everywhere. It's a numbers game and even as you progress in your career, you may not command enough talent to target specific companies.

throwawaytoday5 | 6 years ago | on: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

My current org is composed of mostly MS and PHDs (I'd honestly say 60% have graduate degrees), the only thing it convinced me of is that if you're working in my company and went to MIT (or any other good school) something is wrong with you or you're a foreigner who took whatever job was willing to sponsor your green card.

throwawaytoday5 | 6 years ago | on: Employer health plans are getting pricier and skimpier

Why shouldn't doctors and the medical industry take the blame in the US? They artificially limit the supply of Doctors in the US and have the audacity to claim that building more medical schools will ruin their already lucrative careers.

The whole industry is a shame.

throwawaytoday5 | 6 years ago | on: Using TypeScript with React

It's not really excuses when the person doesn't understand what they are doing or why. The problem is entirely with how NPM downloads dependencies, not exactly typescript.

The OP is rightfully getting type errors due to conflicting type defs, why is that a bad thing?

throwawaytoday5 | 6 years ago | on: WeWork IPO Shows It's the Most Magical Unicorn

I don't mean to be facetious but how does that make it better? Doesn't he still control the company that owns the fund?

Is it suppose to be better because it "looks" better because with my minimal understanding there isn't a difference.

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