I know/. is gone downhill these days, but I hope its still technical enough not to download a random apk from an unknown website by an anonymous poster.
Until they get out of college. Those graphs are very well known inside FB- usage goes up from 13, then falls to near 0 due to parents. Then spikes at 18 (friends in other colleges) and again at 22 (friends post college). They still all come onto the platform eventually.
The fact that the app shames you into force ride tipping means they care less about the customers. I paid for a service, unless you went above and beyond I shouldn't have to deal with begging for more afterwards. If you do something exceptional, like carry my groceries in, I'll tip you in cash. Otherwise I don't want to be asked. Not having a tip is my main reason for using uber over cabs.
No, it isn't. Or at least it shouldn't be. When their entire goal was to make a browser, they did good work. Everything since then has watered down their effort and caused them to lose focus on the one thing they absolutely needed to have win in order to achieve their goals. They should be completely shut down other than Seamonkey/Firefox.
But it may be indexed and just not yet appearing. It takes time for data to propagate through their system. You can have two people search for the same query at the same time and get different results.
Unless you're in a position where you absolutely need a certain expert (such as a research project) or a few other special circumstances (if its quit or go remote situation, say someone moving for non-job related reasons).
First off, that whole 15 minutes thing is absolute bullshit. Maybe its a worst case if you were in truly deep thought over one of the hardest problems of the year. But most of the time you aren't, and it will be a few minutes Like around 1.
Secondly- your productivity doesn't matter. The team's does. Those interruptions- it means a team member needs help. They're blocked. Their productivity is at or near 0 until unblocked. If interrupting you costs 15 minutes from you but saves an hour for him, that interruption is worth it for the team. There are almost 0 of those interruptions that aren't a net gain. Now if you have a problem with particular people being too disruptive, that's a management/personnel issue you should bring up to your manager.
Thirdly- not everyone works well in remote situations. Especially not long term (working remote for a day while you wait for a package/your maid/etc is a different matter). Very few people actually end up working as well as they do in an office- there are MORE distractions at home. And communications do not work as well- video conferences do not work as well as talking to someone in person. Even if you're one of those who do work well from home, you won't be as efficient as you would sitting near the rest of the team.
They do- up to a certain dollar amount. If you need more than that, you buy the insurance. At which point you have to declare what's in the package, and how much insurance you want. They then charge for that, because otherwise it would be ripe for abuse to claim every letter you send if worth 10K.
And a surgeon does have insurance against cutting the wrong bits out. Its called malpractice insurance.
If you/re shipping 5K, insure it for at least 5K if not 10K. That allows you to replace it and deal with costs associated with that replacement. If this did anything other than delay the effort, its from sheer incompetence.
In other words, so long as you throw out all their code and use them as a kind of shitty application server, they can be alright- if you get good developers to write the app for you. Sounds like you should just skip the middleman and write your own application from scratch then.
Profit margins like this are usually calculated by comparing sales price to marginal costs of production. With R&D designing the phones they're likely in the red. Some loss may be ok to prevent competition/provide a brand, but if they're losing enough this makes sense. And I suspect that they are- just way too many players there.
When I need a job I start looking at companies in areas I want to live that may be a match. Why would I reach out to random people and hope they have a job I'd like? Seems extremely inefficient and unlikely to bring on the job happiness, unless you goal is just to grab a job as quickly as possible. I'm rather picky with where I work these days.
Its a little of each- if companies pour in major money now and it doesn't get enough upkeep then it will die for at least another 20 years. Look at 3D TV- failed miserably, isn't a feature on the newest gen of TVs.
As for not just being a fancy screen- no, that's exactly what it is. A fancy screen with a gyro gimmick that detracts from games. No thank you, not now not ever.
Sure it can. I'd even say its likely to- it reminds me a lot of 3d TV. It provides little value, it doesn't actually make games more fun, its not good for your eyes to have a screen that close in constant focus, and it gives me a headache. I wouldn't use it if you gave me a free headset.
The question is do more people think like me or like you?
I've found the exact opposite. In 17 years, I've gotten one job via my network- and that wasn't because I was a good guy, it was because they knew my skill level and needed my expertise. Every other job I've ever gotten is by pure skill.
I'm not saying don't make friends at work, do that. It makes life more fun. But don't expect you'll ever get a job out of it, the odds of ever working with someone again are pretty vanishingly small.
Any "measurable" metric can be and will be gamed. Its a waste of time, and counterproductive. Stop trying to find a magic number, it doesn't exist. Instead look at relative levels of respect by their coworkers, and whether they get what they say they will done (what they say, not what they're told to do).
THere's definitely some. It will never go down to zero- even with SOC you need a little bit of knowledge to set it up. But its not the industry it used to be- its not experiencing growth, and it was flat to decreasing for most of a decade. But other industries in engineering are increasing.
The fact you needed a release team and release engineers to manage a clear case implementation is why its considered one of the worst systems out there, remembered with hatred by almost everyone who used it. A version control system should be easily set up by one admin in an hour or two, and then usable without reams of documentation by any of the engineers. ClearCase failed that.
When I use svn I have a copy of my branch on my local machine. I may not have every other branch or every part of the repo, but I have what I'm working on. I'm not sure what this is for other than companies that can't find a way to partition their version control between products.
That's one field. The reason EE is dying is because software engineering is booming. Back 30, even 20 years ago you had a ton of people making custom ASICs for every piece of electronics. Now, processors are so cheap that there's little need for anything but a SOC solution for all but the most complex products. You still need people to build out those SOCs and embed them, but it takes a fraction of the people. All the work that was done on those ASICs is now done in software- which is still adding a ton of people.
You can't just cherry pick one point and call it a dead end. Many of the other fields of engineering on that same website have high 20% growth.
Well I can say that your manager friend at Amazon's experience is VERY different from mine. Maybe things have changed in 10 years (its been that long since I worked there).
As for "manager equivalent"- that may be where you come from. In my world, a manager is equal to a normal engineer- they aren't above us. Its simply a different skill set. The only reason they aren't equivalent to a junior is that they must have already worked as an engineer for a few years.
That may be another huge difference- a focus on hierarchy. It seems to be very important to your view of engineering. It isn't to the majority of workplaces. I don't consider it a good thing- I'd rather slit my wrists than deal with the political bullshits that comes with it.
Sounds like you're talking about someone with less than 10 years experience. No one hires me to be faster than a young college hire full of energy, much less faster than the 3 of them you could hire instead of me.
You missed the better part. Besides which- I will absolutely solve any non-trivial problem faster than the 2-3 engineers you can replace me with when you include the time of maintenance and big fixing. Probably by a factor of at least 2. Actually I'll probably do it without including maintenance time, as I'll know how to avoid the problems before running into them (because I probably did so last decade). Of course I'll also be solving problems that they're incapable of at this point in their careers.
You start leading project teams somewhere mid-career, but it's not like it's always the same crew. You're given a project, help work out/negotiate scope/schedule/funding, then deal with all the inevitable panics and hit your date. But half your time is design reviews for other teams, best practices work, that sort of thing - you're generally expected to show that your influence was larger than just your team, come review time. Very different from "a mid-career guy, except I type faster".
Yeah, very different. Dealing with budget, scope, schedule- that's a PMs job. An engineer will have input, but he's not leading that. Especially budget- I've never had to deal with that in my career, and never want to. (I can see why this would be different for other engineering fields where physical components are a major cost. But the most I've ever needed to do was requisition a few hundred dollars worth of software).
Programming is very different. Really most employees change employers every 2-6 years
Sure, but how is that related?
You asked how people were looked at 20 years in. My point is nobody worries about that when you don't hold an employee for more than 4. In fact having more levels would make things harder for a company to hire in experienced workers- if i gets out the new guy Bob got hired in at a higher level, it makes everyone else angry and demoralized. If he's hired in at the same level, no harm done. Especially in smaller companies this is important.
But it doesn't change my original point. You look at it as title inflation. It isn't- its an entirely different way of organizing the workforce. One that focuses less on hierarchy and more on just getting shit done. And a far better one IMO.
I've worked at Amazon, HP, and Facebook along with several startups. So its fairly common. Sometimes they use numbers instead of words (1,2,3 or 3,4,5), but the numbers don't match up between companies (for example FB starts at 3). You might also see a higher level for if they hire a famous person- a Torvalds or Stroustrup or similar name.
I think one thing you're missing is that software engineers don't really give much of a shit about titles. The work a mid level and a senior does isn't significantly different- its just expected to be done better/faster. A lead does a different role, but that's because they're expected to show leadership on technical matters, mentor juniors, and take responsibility for the overall technical health of the project. Its kind of like half engineer, half manager, half PM (yes, that's 3 halves on purpose, it can be a busy job).
Your system has what 5 levels? Pointless. There wouldn't be any significant difference in abilities between the average level 3, 4, or 5. I actually couldn't tell you what levels anyone other than the leads or juniors were anywhere I worked- and I only know the juniors because they're fresh out of school. Titles just didn't matter, you did the work that needed to be done.
Programming is very different. Really most employees change employers every 2-6 years. If I see more than 6 years at one place on a resume its unusual. If I see more than 10 its impressive, its a bit of a red flag (they may be too stuck in their ways).
Yeah, you're using a scale of titles that isn't used at any software company. They just aren't equivalent. Here's what they more tend to be:
Junior: 0-3 years experience engineer: 2-6 years experience senior: 5+ years, no cap lead: actually leading a team of 5-15 people (not managing, technical leadership). You aren't a lead if you aren't leading a team. Lead is above senior and may have seniors on his team. 6+ years principal; rarely used. When it is, 8+ years
(Overlap is because some people move faster, due to luck, politics, or skill)
Comparing this scale to the scale you're talking about makes no sense, its like complaining about inflation of the rank captain between the navy and army. It isn't inflation its totally different terminology. And really there's no reason they should be the same. Nor would the percentages be the same- software engineering tends to be younger skewed, with heavy drop off in early years. It will be far more bottom heavy. Fewer people percentage-wise leave other engineering disciplines as early or enter it as late in life.
Slashdot Mirror
I know /. is gone downhill these days, but I hope its still technical enough not to download a random apk from an unknown website by an anonymous poster.
Not cluttering my email is the biggest feature of Facebook.
I anxiously await this technology to attach things to an email. They need a name for this innovation. Maybe attachments?
Until they get out of college. Those graphs are very well known inside FB- usage goes up from 13, then falls to near 0 due to parents. Then spikes at 18 (friends in other colleges) and again at 22 (friends post college). They still all come onto the platform eventually.
The fact that the app shames you into force ride tipping means they care less about the customers. I paid for a service, unless you went above and beyond I shouldn't have to deal with begging for more afterwards. If you do something exceptional, like carry my groceries in, I'll tip you in cash. Otherwise I don't want to be asked. Not having a tip is my main reason for using uber over cabs.
No, it isn't. Or at least it shouldn't be. When their entire goal was to make a browser, they did good work. Everything since then has watered down their effort and caused them to lose focus on the one thing they absolutely needed to have win in order to achieve their goals. They should be completely shut down other than Seamonkey/Firefox.
But it may be indexed and just not yet appearing. It takes time for data to propagate through their system. You can have two people search for the same query at the same time and get different results.
1)Is it actually possible to know if a given URL has been indexed? Searching for it isn't sufficient, as it may just not be in your results.
2)It may well be their repsonsibility to blacklist it from future indexing.
Unless you're in a position where you absolutely need a certain expert (such as a research project) or a few other special circumstances (if its quit or go remote situation, say someone moving for non-job related reasons).
First off, that whole 15 minutes thing is absolute bullshit. Maybe its a worst case if you were in truly deep thought over one of the hardest problems of the year. But most of the time you aren't, and it will be a few minutes Like around 1.
Secondly- your productivity doesn't matter. The team's does. Those interruptions- it means a team member needs help. They're blocked. Their productivity is at or near 0 until unblocked. If interrupting you costs 15 minutes from you but saves an hour for him, that interruption is worth it for the team. There are almost 0 of those interruptions that aren't a net gain. Now if you have a problem with particular people being too disruptive, that's a management/personnel issue you should bring up to your manager.
Thirdly- not everyone works well in remote situations. Especially not long term (working remote for a day while you wait for a package/your maid/etc is a different matter). Very few people actually end up working as well as they do in an office- there are MORE distractions at home. And communications do not work as well- video conferences do not work as well as talking to someone in person. Even if you're one of those who do work well from home, you won't be as efficient as you would sitting near the rest of the team.
They do- up to a certain dollar amount. If you need more than that, you buy the insurance. At which point you have to declare what's in the package, and how much insurance you want. They then charge for that, because otherwise it would be ripe for abuse to claim every letter you send if worth 10K.
And a surgeon does have insurance against cutting the wrong bits out. Its called malpractice insurance.
If you/re shipping 5K, insure it for at least 5K if not 10K. That allows you to replace it and deal with costs associated with that replacement. If this did anything other than delay the effort, its from sheer incompetence.
In other words, so long as you throw out all their code and use them as a kind of shitty application server, they can be alright- if you get good developers to write the app for you. Sounds like you should just skip the middleman and write your own application from scratch then.
Profit margins like this are usually calculated by comparing sales price to marginal costs of production. With R&D designing the phones they're likely in the red. Some loss may be ok to prevent competition/provide a brand, but if they're losing enough this makes sense. And I suspect that they are- just way too many players there.
When I need a job I start looking at companies in areas I want to live that may be a match. Why would I reach out to random people and hope they have a job I'd like? Seems extremely inefficient and unlikely to bring on the job happiness, unless you goal is just to grab a job as quickly as possible. I'm rather picky with where I work these days.
Its a little of each- if companies pour in major money now and it doesn't get enough upkeep then it will die for at least another 20 years. Look at 3D TV- failed miserably, isn't a feature on the newest gen of TVs.
As for not just being a fancy screen- no, that's exactly what it is. A fancy screen with a gyro gimmick that detracts from games. No thank you, not now not ever.
Sure it can. I'd even say its likely to- it reminds me a lot of 3d TV. It provides little value, it doesn't actually make games more fun, its not good for your eyes to have a screen that close in constant focus, and it gives me a headache. I wouldn't use it if you gave me a free headset.
The question is do more people think like me or like you?
I've found the exact opposite. In 17 years, I've gotten one job via my network- and that wasn't because I was a good guy, it was because they knew my skill level and needed my expertise. Every other job I've ever gotten is by pure skill.
I'm not saying don't make friends at work, do that. It makes life more fun. But don't expect you'll ever get a job out of it, the odds of ever working with someone again are pretty vanishingly small.
Any "measurable" metric can be and will be gamed. Its a waste of time, and counterproductive. Stop trying to find a magic number, it doesn't exist. Instead look at relative levels of respect by their coworkers, and whether they get what they say they will done (what they say, not what they're told to do).
THere's definitely some. It will never go down to zero- even with SOC you need a little bit of knowledge to set it up. But its not the industry it used to be- its not experiencing growth, and it was flat to decreasing for most of a decade. But other industries in engineering are increasing.
The fact you needed a release team and release engineers to manage a clear case implementation is why its considered one of the worst systems out there, remembered with hatred by almost everyone who used it. A version control system should be easily set up by one admin in an hour or two, and then usable without reams of documentation by any of the engineers. ClearCase failed that.
When I use svn I have a copy of my branch on my local machine. I may not have every other branch or every part of the repo, but I have what I'm working on. I'm not sure what this is for other than companies that can't find a way to partition their version control between products.
That's one field. The reason EE is dying is because software engineering is booming. Back 30, even 20 years ago you had a ton of people making custom ASICs for every piece of electronics. Now, processors are so cheap that there's little need for anything but a SOC solution for all but the most complex products. You still need people to build out those SOCs and embed them, but it takes a fraction of the people. All the work that was done on those ASICs is now done in software- which is still adding a ton of people.
You can't just cherry pick one point and call it a dead end. Many of the other fields of engineering on that same website have high 20% growth.
Well I can say that your manager friend at Amazon's experience is VERY different from mine. Maybe things have changed in 10 years (its been that long since I worked there).
As for "manager equivalent"- that may be where you come from. In my world, a manager is equal to a normal engineer- they aren't above us. Its simply a different skill set. The only reason they aren't equivalent to a junior is that they must have already worked as an engineer for a few years.
That may be another huge difference- a focus on hierarchy. It seems to be very important to your view of engineering. It isn't to the majority of workplaces. I don't consider it a good thing- I'd rather slit my wrists than deal with the political bullshits that comes with it.
You missed the better part. Besides which- I will absolutely solve any non-trivial problem faster than the 2-3 engineers you can replace me with when you include the time of maintenance and big fixing. Probably by a factor of at least 2. Actually I'll probably do it without including maintenance time, as I'll know how to avoid the problems before running into them (because I probably did so last decade). Of course I'll also be solving problems that they're incapable of at this point in their careers.
Yeah, very different. Dealing with budget, scope, schedule- that's a PMs job. An engineer will have input, but he's not leading that. Especially budget- I've never had to deal with that in my career, and never want to. (I can see why this would be different for other engineering fields where physical components are a major cost. But the most I've ever needed to do was requisition a few hundred dollars worth of software).
You asked how people were looked at 20 years in. My point is nobody worries about that when you don't hold an employee for more than 4. In fact having more levels would make things harder for a company to hire in experienced workers- if i gets out the new guy Bob got hired in at a higher level, it makes everyone else angry and demoralized. If he's hired in at the same level, no harm done. Especially in smaller companies this is important.
But it doesn't change my original point. You look at it as title inflation. It isn't- its an entirely different way of organizing the workforce. One that focuses less on hierarchy and more on just getting shit done. And a far better one IMO.
I've worked at Amazon, HP, and Facebook along with several startups. So its fairly common. Sometimes they use numbers instead of words (1,2,3 or 3,4,5), but the numbers don't match up between companies (for example FB starts at 3). You might also see a higher level for if they hire a famous person- a Torvalds or Stroustrup or similar name.
I think one thing you're missing is that software engineers don't really give much of a shit about titles. The work a mid level and a senior does isn't significantly different- its just expected to be done better/faster. A lead does a different role, but that's because they're expected to show leadership on technical matters, mentor juniors, and take responsibility for the overall technical health of the project. Its kind of like half engineer, half manager, half PM (yes, that's 3 halves on purpose, it can be a busy job).
Your system has what 5 levels? Pointless. There wouldn't be any significant difference in abilities between the average level 3, 4, or 5. I actually couldn't tell you what levels anyone other than the leads or juniors were anywhere I worked- and I only know the juniors because they're fresh out of school. Titles just didn't matter, you did the work that needed to be done.
Programming is very different. Really most employees change employers every 2-6 years. If I see more than 6 years at one place on a resume its unusual. If I see more than 10 its impressive, its a bit of a red flag (they may be too stuck in their ways).
Yeah, you're using a scale of titles that isn't used at any software company. They just aren't equivalent. Here's what they more tend to be:
Junior: 0-3 years experience
engineer: 2-6 years experience
senior: 5+ years, no cap
lead: actually leading a team of 5-15 people (not managing, technical leadership). You aren't a lead if you aren't leading a team. Lead is above senior and may have seniors on his team. 6+ years
principal; rarely used. When it is, 8+ years
(Overlap is because some people move faster, due to luck, politics, or skill)
Comparing this scale to the scale you're talking about makes no sense, its like complaining about inflation of the rank captain between the navy and army. It isn't inflation its totally different terminology. And really there's no reason they should be the same. Nor would the percentages be the same- software engineering tends to be younger skewed, with heavy drop off in early years. It will be far more bottom heavy. Fewer people percentage-wise leave other engineering disciplines as early or enter it as late in life.