xzyyyz's comments

not convincing. (horizontal) scalability comes at cost, but it changes size of the problem we can handle considerably.

thank you very much! pointer to the home page would suffice. your willingness to walk an extra mile (and copy relevant text) is much appreciated.

as i mentioned, i read home page years ago. in that time, third paragraph did not exist and 1-100 were considered a challenge. the language of request changes since that times.

It is called the honor system. But you're right: some people... And no, Project Euler does not demand. You can be sure, nobody is going to be sued. It asks politely to show respect to those who created the project, and to those who did not solve the problem.

Besides other things, there is a place to publish interesting solution: it is Project Euler forum to discuss solved problems.

Apparently I do not keep up with times. I read the rules some 15 years ago last time. :-(

If you can provide a link, I would be really grateful!

Project Euler is collection of puzzles based on math. The coding and designs skills are completely secondary to the math. The algorithms (except for computational number theory, computation geometry) are completely secondary. So it is knowledge of math that is barrier.

I keep learning math (and, sometimes, relatively new development in math) by solving problems. To start, I would recommend reading G.H. Hardy & E.M. Wright "An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers".

With LeetCode -- this is more traditional exercise in coding. I did not pay much attention to it. So, sorry, cannot provide any advice

I find it rather annoying and irrespectful for Project Euler. They specifically ask not to publish solutions.

Some other collection could be used for demonstration of skills and languages.

There is a lot of harm:

1. In order to get a job, a person need to quit one. If there is a risk (in form of trial period), why to accept such an offer? As result, best candidates pass, or at least stick to existing positions longer. Or pay raise must be more significant.

2. Reputational harm: read about Amazon's hire-to-fire practice. And try to guess, why a lot of people do not consider employment with Amazon.

3. Work harm: any new employee is investment. It has to be onboarded, and it is a heavy load for the accepting team.

Of course, it heavily depends on the job market segment. I know software eng. only. If most candidates are unemployed, trial period could be a blessing. In the current market, why would I even apply (and spend my time on the interview?

> there's still absolute value in returning to office because it promotes a sense of community and networking.

Without data it is religion. Even sect. If you want to insist, provide data how "absolute value" increases productivity.

So far, I suffer productivity loss after RTO. I also spend less time working (after 3 hours of commute I have very hard time convincing myself that I want to do some overtime -- a normal situation when I am WfH).

I know people who prefer to work from office (e.g., because no children distraction). The action work here is prefer. They are good enough teammate of mine not to impose their preferences under disguise of culture and senses.

1. Inertia. It is difficult to switch measurement in people's heads. For example, I grew up in metric environment, but I did not drive car. So for me, local sizes are in meters, but car speed, distances are in miles :-). Home temperature is in Celsius, but grill or oven are in Farenheits. :-)

2. Cost. There is a direct cost (like remarking everything), and indirect -- all the chaos and errors because of mixing up units. To foot the bill is hard sell in Congress.

3. Peer pressure: because of size of economy, US can request whatever it wants from partners. UK had to move to metric when joined EU.

That said, I am very supportive of metric. We are paying price for the imperial units. Every car shop has two set of wrenches. (BTW, it is metal, production -- read climate impact. May be not big, but still impact we could avoid.) All the software must show controls for units. We need to train professionals (like doctors) to live in two worlds. And the list is endless. [Did I mention translation bugs? For example, outside temperature translation is 9/5 Celsius + 32, but difference between outside and inside is 9/5 Celsius. :-( -- real bug I caught in critical industrial control system. ]

I am not sure where does US stands today. For example, I think metrics is teached in school. Most food is dual marked. So, maybe, it is not rejection, but rather slow move?

A mechanical watch is a piece of jewelry. As such, it subject of fashion whims, fragility and limitations. But, what a pleasure!

I enjoy beauty of my skeleton. The tourbillon is absolutely mesmerizing. The alarm adds utility to the third timepiece. And so on...

A lot of mechanical watches has automatic winding nowadays. Watch winder is an easy and relatively cheap solution. I also had more problems with scratches on quartz, than with sapphire crystal.

This is not about devastating effect. As adults, we take responsibility for our choices.

let's split it: <alcohol-centric culture> and <work culture>. These two cover significant portion of population to have intersection as a majority. The same way one can talk about <sport work culture>, or any other. To call it <alcohol-centric work culture> one would need to provide evidence of disproportional presence of <alcohol-centric culture> in work environment.

Given the fact that many companies prohibit alcohol these days, the proof would be a hard task.

The most worrying part is equaling respect of personal preferences with inclusive culture. ("I cannot participate in conversation, so there should be no this conversation")

Others said enough about prizes.

I respect my guests. Being vegetarian myself, I am trying to know in advance my guests' preferences -- and they are weird sometimes (no garlic, or no mustard, or you name it). But I am far from waging war on meat-eating: in fact I would go with friends to steak house without second consideration.

Inclusivity is a willingness to accommodate. It is respect to people preferences, regardless of small or big group they are. It is respect to event organizers: it would be nearly impossible to find venue. (I know vegans, and I know people who'd reject anything but meat -- any suggestion for a dinner place?) (In many events my lunch is "whatever you have vegetarian", and I have a backup protein bars -- but I consider it as my problem, not organizers'. They are busy, and I am grateful to them.)

Nice to meet you. I am completely un-Ruby Pythonista, and I like Elixir a lot.

I felt the same way as topic starter, and I invested couple months to make several tools Elixir-native -- the project was cancelled with the layoff.

I think, this is a compromise. I strongly dislike Erlang abstraction leak, but I understand the desire to deliver the language, and iterate on cleaning up toolchain & libraries later.

> Disagreeing with social norms doesn't strike me as humble.

we're leaving in different social circles... so it is totally possible that the norm i see differs from yours.

I worked once for the startup where idea was, "engineer" does not need prefix. Salaries, responsibilities, you name it -- were different. The title (in R&D) was not. Nobody cares.

I did not say "skill". I do not care about skills any more than I care about years of experience. The only thing I care about is ability, willingness, and readiness to contribute. The same person might match differently in different companies. E.g., intimate knowledge of C++ in embedded systems (e.g., avionics software) might be highly irrelevant in web-oriented startup, which is pushing Python. Would 10+ years engineer qualify for "staff" position? definitely no. "senior"? -- maybe. If Boing had layoff, it might be an option for somebody to restart carrier. A good person will quickly grow through the ladder, in the same company or moving on. But immediately? please.

> a matter of law for government jobs One can think of government as a single employer. In my company there is a levelling guide. We do not care about government, government does not care about us. :-)

It is so pleasant and so rare to agree with people these days. I agree with you.

It is signal for me. My interview consists of many areas beyond coding. But coding is one I explore too. (like write a methods with two sequential loops and single if in your favorite language.) You would not believe, some 30% people fail.

Mentor or programmer -- we need both qualities in the end. both extremes are harmful. To be a good mentor, one need to have respect of colleagues -- and it comes from contribution too.

gamble -- agree again.

It could be the case.

The question is, how to distinguish one who can get up to speed quickly from one who cannot.

In the end, there are expectations of the engineer, and expectations of the company. If the candidate is super-rusty, question is, why? For extended period of time this engineer did not code, and apparently was comfortable with it. Would such a person be happy in the environment, where 50% of the time goes to direct development (remaining 50% -- mentoring, project management, etc)? Note, I wrote development, not coding. But writing technical docs is not development either.

I humbly disagree. Experience means nothing. The ranking is defined by how capable engineer is.

Do not get me wrong. Title != ranking either. There is no industry-wide agreement what senior engineer is. Frank might be a senior engineer in his company -- because because he proved in short time he can perform on the senior engineer level of that company.

Each of us has limits. For some it is Senior, for some it even could be Junior. If people are happy in their level, there is no reason why they cannot be productive for many, many years.

Very true. I totally agree with you. :-)

I tried to highlight most common problem I see during interview, not judge specific people, or even less people category.

I am coding for 40+ years...

My experience: * out of college people remember theory, cannot code. * mid-level engineers start to forget theory, can code, begin system-wide design. * senior engineers can design, forget how to code.

If the position of senior engineer expects hands-on coding (mine does), coding exercise during interview is quite revealing (sadly). Personally I do not believe in engineers who cannot code.