And if they can't do that, they'll draft such a law THEN charge you.
First, just drafting a law doesn't make it law -- they would have to pass the law through the usual channels.
Second, the US Constitution prohibits Congress from passing ex post facto laws (Article I, Section 9: "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.") and States from passing ex post facto laws (Article I, Section 10: "No State shall [...] pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law [...]).
Perhaps you meant: "If it is within their regulatory authority to do so, the FTC should enact regulations requiring that *every* corporation must protect customer privacy."
(Although, I don't know why such a requirement would be limited to corporations -- I don't see why unincorporated businesses should get a pass).
The good news is that a careless CPA may email a copy of Trump's tax returns to a colleague and an ISP along the way will suck them out of the stream and sell them to the National Enquirer without fear of legal repercussions.
(Not really because, if nothing else, there are strict Federal laws that protect tax returns specifically -- but it's fun to think about how this could backfire.)
Even if the contributor has passed away, they may have signed over whatever remaining rights they had in their software to heirs. Good luck figuring that out.
I care about it because it's an enumerated right in the United States Constitution. If you believe judges should ignore it because you don't think it should be there, you need to accept that similar logic can be used to eviscerate other similar rights.
For example, "Who givea a fuck about the 5th ? It's a stupid idea that only appeals to criminals anyway. Get rid of it." After all, if cops could just beat confessions out of criminals, imagine how many more crimes would be solved.
See how that works?
If you want to get rid of it, there's a well defined and effective process to do so. This process has been used to ban alcohol, and later undo the ban. It has been used to give women the right to vote. In fact, it was used to ratify the Second Amendment itself! Go for it.
Though, I can understand why cowardly thugs like you fear the Second Amendment because it means that elderly wheelchair bound people (some of whom could have mopped the floor with you without even breaking a sweat when they were your age) might be able protect themselves when you attack them for profit or sport. Right now all you can do safely is torture household pets.
HRC lost the election, Trump did not win it. It was remarkable that Trump got elected.
I voted for neither of them (in the state I live in, it really doesn't matter who I vote for for President due to the EC and the solid political demographics in my state) and instead voted for a third party candidate whose party platform (not necessarily the candidate) better aligned with my political preferences. However, if I lived in a state where my vote had any chance of impacting the outcome, I would have found it an agonizing choice.
Neither Clinton or Trump are honest so there was little difference there.
Clinton was much better at evading and triangulates more expertly. She, for example, refused to answer a question, even when pressed, during the debate because any answer would have cost her some votes and gained her some votes and she wasn't sure which answer was the best "net gain" (that was when she essentially refused to state her opinion on if the Second Amendment supports an individual or a collective right -- she of course in reality subscribes to the discredited "collective rights" interpretation that was popular decades ago when she was coming of political/legal age). Trump on the other hand is crude and unsophisticated and says whatever random thing he's thinking at the moment. Generally I have to give advantage to Trump here -- Trump's lies and misconceptions are more likely to be exposed and obvious to more of the populace than Clinton's would be.
Clinton was much more technically qualified to be President of the United States, although supporting some questionable foreign policy decisions (such as the Iran deal) does not give me extreme confidence in her decision making skills. So, advantage to Clinton on this aspect.
However, what would probably have tipped me towards Trump, if I was faced with making the awful choice, would be the Supreme Court. I think judges should apply the law, not make it or fix it to match their social, religious, or political preferences -- if the law is broken, in their opinions they can suggest that maybe the legislature might want to look at fixing it but until it's "fixed", they should apply it. This President was likely to have the opportunity to seat two or three justices on the Supreme Court (obviously Scalia's replacement is one of these) and these are lifelong appointments that could shape the court for 30 years, long after the day-to-day stench of a Clinton or Trump term in office is hopefully little but a a trivial pursuit question (barring WWIII). Trump proposed a list of possible nominees who tended towards reading the Constitution and the law as written, not as they wish it were written. Clinton has consistently chosen to advocate laws that pretend the Second Amendment does not exist or is, at a minimum, not of the same "class" as, for example, the First Amendment or Fourteenth Amendment or Fifth Amendment. Therefore, I had little confidence that she would nominate SCOTUS justices who, themselves, followed the "apply the law, do not make it or fix it" judicial philosophy.
There's little reason not to try it if you like meat. The decision to consume it regularly would be based on price and quality. The quality could, eventually, be much higher (and the environmental impact much lower) than hoof grown meat.
A blob of meat grown in a vat has no intrinsic need for tendons, bones, silverskin and big chunks of fat -- none of which I want in a steak (but, lab grown bacon better have a lot of fat in it in chunks!). As well, if done right, imagine how perfect the marbling could be!
However, I'm not holding my breath because I'm picky about texture. For example, I refuse to eat, except when I have no options, "press formed" turkey and think the package of meat in the grocery should be required to have a term like "Press Formed" in letters at least as large as the largest used for the word "Turkey" within two font sizes away and that every use of the word "Turkey" should be preceded by the term "Press Formed" (or whatever word the FDA picks to describe this abomination that is sold as "turkey").
Those blobs of meat in the vat better get good exercise to make the texture correct (the good news is that they probably only need to be exercised during the day so solar panels can power the electrodes).
Most libertarians I know believe in the sanctity of contracts and support having a government civil court system to enforce those contracts. Of course, there are many different flavors of libertarians and some do believe in anarchy with no laws but I don't believe that is the majority.
Although "open ended" questions are good for some things, and I try to ask them, they are generally not appropriate for ten minute interview coding questions - especially for senior people.
In the real world, the code one writes is generally operating in substantial context which arose from design, not raw coding - often as part of a much larger system the developer is participating in building, enhancing, or maintaining but sometimes (such as in the case of a library you are distributing) that context is virtually entirely contained in an interface spec. This context is generally quite extensive and, especially in the case of the code being part of a system you are building, well embedded in developers' minds. The more careful a developer is, the more she considers this context. When deprived of context, she could spend ten minutes of what I intended to spend just ten minutes on just getting the requirements down and not actually getting to solving the problem. This is counter to the primary goal of coding exercises for senior people -- to flush out those who actually can't code their way out of a wet paper bag in spite of their claims and/or to identify if the candidate has a grasp of a particular concept.
For example, I regularly pose a simple programming problem involving multithreading and concurrency that flushes out the inability to write a tiny bit of decent code and meet requirements without overengineering, while also giving me insight into if the candidate has a clue about concurrency issues.
I expect senior people to give me a correct answer (there's one tiny twist I leave in and if they seem to be having a problem with that, they get only tiny demerits and I give them a five word hint which almost always results in an "ah, yes, of course" type of response and they go on to solve the problem) and the good ones almost always do.
"Fresh outs" with limited experience very rarely solve the problem correctly (which actually surprised me at first, but it just seems to be a reality). With them, I'm looking to see if they do stupid things like just layering antipatterns on antipatterns in a vain attempt to fix their code, if they can follow my example of where their code fails, or if they keep insisting their code is correct (when I've just proven otherwise). I prefer a "Hmm... I afraid I can't figure this one out, I'd need more time and research to solve it" -- at which point I may give them the simplest solution and ask them to review it and explain to me what it does to make sure they can read code and follow it.
The problem is almost as completely specified as I can reasonably make it. The "best" answer is about six C/C++ statements and I've never seen a correct answer that was more than about twice that complexity. I try to tell the candidate what NOT to worry about. For example, I tell the candidate:
Performance is NOT an issue. This function will be called VERY rarely, perhaps only twice per system startup. The best solution is the shortest and simplest, any additional complications introduced to enhance performance is a bug, not a feature. The best solution for this problem, in fact, would not perform well in a generalized library which may be called frequently. We may discuss opportunities for performance improvements later.
I also tell them that the best solution I've seen is not more than ten executable statements (this to make set some general expectations of the expected complexity). I stress that correctness is an absolute requirement and more important than anything else (such as code length).
I also tell them that if they have any concerns about any aspect of the problem to ask me if they should concern themselves with those aspects before expending energy on doing so. I do this because there is a one aspect that I intentionally leave unspecified as a launchpad for later discussion with candidates that solve the problem successfully. However, out of the many times I've posed this
Nope. The brokerage firm was fine with this situation and were not surprised by it at all - I doubt very much that it was a bug. It might have created an alert to an account manager somewhere who let it remain -- I wouldn't know. There may well have been a higher level check somewhere that made sure that all of my accounts, collectively, didn't have a negative balance -- I don't know. The negative balance was tens of dollars and not worth anyone bothering me about or me doing anything about - in the end it settled out through natural account activity. It might even have been less than the commission on the activity that caused it.
Hello, my name is Anonymous Coward. I am a software developer.
I was talking to you about a database kernel position which is a field I have spent much of my career in and in one case was a key member of the design/coding team developing the initial (and several subsequent) releases of a revolutionary enterprise class scalable DBMS which is still being sold over thirty years later and in production at many of the biggest companies. You, of course, must have known that because you contacted me and, unusually, I decided to stop by and chat with you because I have a soft spot for startup companies, database, and engineering managers who look around seeking talent themselves rather than relying solely on recruiters. You asserted that your startup was developing an enterprise class scalable DBMS system so it seemed like it might be interesting.
You then asked me to write, on the whiteboard, a 'debit/credit' function that took three arguments and returned, IIRC, the amount transferred (admittedly that was a little odd). The first two arguments were account objects (passed by reference if I recall) representing the source and destination accounts respectively and the third argument was an amount (presumably in the same currency as both accounts were maintained in) to transfer (a float if I recall -- that, of course, is likely stupid in itself when dealing with currency).
I, understandably, was perplexed -- you must want something more than this simple function (I'm not fresh out of high school looking for a summer job) and I tried to get more requirements out of you and got none except when I asked if this function was to provide its own concurrency control or if a higher level would have insured both accounts were sufficiently locked you said something like "Okay, you need to provide the locking" and agreed that I could assume existence of "Acquire/ReleaseWriteLockAccount(AccountObject)" functions.
Okay -- so I'm thinking this is a concurrency problem, no problem (still lame, but okay...). Obviously I need to deal with deadlock potential so I ask if I there is some unique attribute of each account (you didn't give me a description of the account object's public members) that had a well defined order that I (and other developers) agreed to use to order locks when locking multiple accounts to eliminate or at least reduce deadlocks. You weren't prepared for the question so I asked if I could assume (I think) that the account number was a public field, unique among all accounts, and supported the LessThan operator with traditional semantics. You said, sure.
I wrote the code making sure to lock the accounts in order of account number, transfer the funds, unlock correctly and return the required value.
You were not happy -- what you really wanted me to check, it turns out, was that the source account would not end up with a negative balance and fail to do the transfer and return 0 as the result.
What you didn't seem to realize is that in the real world cash balances on individual accounts go negative sometimes. In fact, at that instant, I had one (of multiple) accounts at one brokerage firm which had had a small negative cash balance due to an inter-account transfer out for over six months and no one cared because I had multiple accounts at that firm with a net value of well over a million dollars and cash balances (well, "cash equivalents"), overall, of a few hundred thousand dollars.
Both of us made a decision in that discussion. You decided you didn't want to hire me. I decided I would never work for you or your company as I didn't want to risk working on/at a team/company which was so poor at evaluating people and would pass on good developers who know how the real world works and would likely hire unqualified people who answered your kindergarten questions the particular way you wanted.
Of course, I was glad that we both made those decisions because your company seems to have never got past a very modest A round and seems to have disappeared off the face of the Earth quietly.
Everyone is a member of several protected classes (we are all of some gender and some mix of races for example).
Those that happen to be in a minority group within a class toss that into lawsuits as a reason they are not getting what they want even though they are completely wrong or are, more strategically, using the claim as a bargaining chip. Lawyers are much more likely to take these cases when they really don't have merit because the chances of settlement are higher as the risk of finding a sympathetic (aka gullible) jury is higher, the risk of bad PR if the case goes to trial is higher, and it's one more claim that needs to be defended which increases the cost of litigation (even if they win) for the defendant. Those that are in a majority group within a class don't have the leverage because of the public notion that the majority can't be discriminated against.
Ellen Pao is a great example of someone who, in spite of much support and mentoring, just wasn't cut out for the job she wanted as a senior partner (which was pretty clear from testimony) but she got a lawyer to take her case on gender discrimination grounds. The vast majority (all?) of the 20 or 25 people, almost certainly mostly men, who were passed over before her didn't do the same (perhaps because they were not as arrogant and could recognize that they didn't have the necessary traits and skills) and just moved on. Had the men attempted to make a false claim that they were passed over because of gender instead of skills and traits, they would never have found a lawyer to take the case anyway (California is an "at will" state).
Umm... Look at the comment I was responding to and then think again. It's okay, I'll wait for you -- I know it's hard for you to read. Also, take a bit more time and read the GP as well.
Tick, tock...
Okay, 20 minutes later after you found someone to read (and explain to you) the comment I was responding to:
If the culture was that bad, wouldn't there be multiple lawsuits from multiple complainants, both male and female?
perhaps you will understand.
You see, the point that was raised in the GP was that perhaps all "peons" in the building, male and female alike, were "harassed" by being required to work 90 hour weeks etc. In that case, those who are not a member of a protected group are unlikely to find a lawyer to take a case on the pretense that somehow they were selectively picked out for mistreatment based on their membership in that class (when in fact they were not).
Nope, I wasn't arguing that point at all -- nice strawman. However, there is no claim here that someone (male, female, or other) exposed themselves to this engineer -- let alone actually touched her with their exposed genitalia.
What grounds would a male, esp. a white able-bodied straight male, have to sue if he was legitimately a salaried employee? He wouldn't be part of any actual or de-facto protected class. It's legal to expect salaried workers to finish their work even if it takes extra effort.
Huh? What maid offers their (why do you assume "her"?) services to the "general public"? Maids will turn down clients because their house is too hard to clean, because they don't like the homeowner's pets (perhaps the maid is allergic to cats) or just because they think the potential client is creepy or seems like someone who would be a pain to deal with.
So, if Uber is the exact same service as taxis, why did the government put all these burdensome regulations on taxis? Blame the government and the rent seeking taxi drivers -- not Uber. If all that regulation resulted in a superior product, presumably many/most people (who can afford it) will pick a taxi over Uber and Uber would just be a service for the poor who will enjoy increased mobility and flexibility that they didn't have before Uber. Seems like a win-win for all.
That suits me fine. Of course, one has to make the call at the right time (or a bit before the right time) and not second guess because of impact it may have on others (such as a spouse who has made a different choice but is still somewhat aware).
When you are 95 years old and no longer competent, if you don't have kids you are far more likely to end up with someone who doesn't really care about you at all hired (at your expense) by the state to make decisions for you. Kids are no guarantee of course, but they are probably your best bet (if you treat them well) to avoid this fate -- except, of course, blowing your brains all over the wall before you get to that state.
Elsewhere I read that LG recommended a simple workaround. Just put your wireless router in a Faraday cage and your LG monitor will work fine when it's nearby the router.
Although they recommend a certified LG brand "Wireless Router Faraday Cage" that they will be launching soon, I understand that Monster Cable will also be announcing one that works better -- something to do with the gold content and balanced geometry apparently.
If a potential employer doesn't understand situations like that, you don't want to work for them anyway. Usually the only reason to offer one's last/current/recent salary is if asked - rarely would it make sense to "lead" with that information.
Sure, that's why members of my groups have been well paid historically. Tech is hard -- and too many people who think they possess the necessary skills, don't. you have to pay to attract and retain the good ones (and, frankly, get rid of any hiring mistakes as quickly as possible).
It is a reality that most tech training except on proprietary systems is going to be self directed -- most good techies are curious and intrigued by technology. The days of expecting to work for one or two companies for your entire career are long gone - five years is a fairly long time now. With that change (which, overall, has been good in my opinion -- much more cross pollination and skill differentiation), companies have much less motivation to invest in training. As well, honestly, much formal training is a waste of time -- if you want to learn a new area or skill, once you're a seasoned professional, it's usually more efficient to do it on your own rather than listening to, watching, or reading structured course material that covers stuff you've already figured out while glossing over that which you are curious about.
I don't understand why people assume that salary information is the only, or even a very significant part, of a hiring or salary decision. There are many factors and salary history is just one small piece of the equation. If you don't trust a company to not abuse that information, why are you bothering to interview with them -- why would you assume they wouldn't abuse you in other ways after hiring you?
Of course I understand that some companies are "cheap" (or just small and granting options instead of high salaries). Where did you get the impression I didn't understand that?
I've never failed to extend an offer based primarily on salary history. However, on some occasions salary history has lead me to look closer at some areas and discover that I didn't want to extend an offer. Perhaps, for example, I know someone who worked with the person in the past and wouldn't have reached out to them if not for the odd low pay at a company that generally paid well and, in that process, discovered that the candidate was technically skilled on the surface (as they may have demonstrated in the interview process) but couldn't actually complete projects because they over optimized or over generalized.
Slashdot Mirror
First, just drafting a law doesn't make it law -- they would have to pass the law through the usual channels.
Second, the US Constitution prohibits Congress from passing ex post facto laws (Article I, Section 9: "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.") and States from passing ex post facto laws (Article I, Section 10: "No State shall [...] pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law [...]).
The FTC can't "pass" a "law".
Perhaps you meant: "If it is within their regulatory authority to do so, the FTC should enact regulations requiring that *every* corporation must protect customer privacy."
(Although, I don't know why such a requirement would be limited to corporations -- I don't see why unincorporated businesses should get a pass).
The good news is that a careless CPA may email a copy of Trump's tax returns to a colleague and an ISP along the way will suck them out of the stream and sell them to the National Enquirer without fear of legal repercussions.
(Not really because, if nothing else, there are strict Federal laws that protect tax returns specifically -- but it's fun to think about how this could backfire.)
Each to their own. Personally, I never cared for the editor that comes packaged with that OS.
Even if the contributor has passed away, they may have signed over whatever remaining rights they had in their software to heirs. Good luck figuring that out.
<Sound of two gunshots in background>
Person: Okay, I put them in the trunk.
Car: Thank you, where are we going today?
I care about it because it's an enumerated right in the United States Constitution. If you believe judges should ignore it because you don't think it should be there, you need to accept that similar logic can be used to eviscerate other similar rights.
For example, "Who givea a fuck about the 5th ? It's a stupid idea that only appeals to criminals anyway. Get rid of it." After all, if cops could just beat confessions out of criminals, imagine how many more crimes would be solved.
See how that works?
If you want to get rid of it, there's a well defined and effective process to do so. This process has been used to ban alcohol, and later undo the ban. It has been used to give women the right to vote. In fact, it was used to ratify the Second Amendment itself! Go for it.
Though, I can understand why cowardly thugs like you fear the Second Amendment because it means that elderly wheelchair bound people (some of whom could have mopped the floor with you without even breaking a sweat when they were your age) might be able protect themselves when you attack them for profit or sport. Right now all you can do safely is torture household pets.
HRC lost the election, Trump did not win it. It was remarkable that Trump got elected.
I voted for neither of them (in the state I live in, it really doesn't matter who I vote for for President due to the EC and the solid political demographics in my state) and instead voted for a third party candidate whose party platform (not necessarily the candidate) better aligned with my political preferences. However, if I lived in a state where my vote had any chance of impacting the outcome, I would have found it an agonizing choice.
Neither Clinton or Trump are honest so there was little difference there.
Clinton was much better at evading and triangulates more expertly. She, for example, refused to answer a question, even when pressed, during the debate because any answer would have cost her some votes and gained her some votes and she wasn't sure which answer was the best "net gain" (that was when she essentially refused to state her opinion on if the Second Amendment supports an individual or a collective right -- she of course in reality subscribes to the discredited "collective rights" interpretation that was popular decades ago when she was coming of political/legal age). Trump on the other hand is crude and unsophisticated and says whatever random thing he's thinking at the moment. Generally I have to give advantage to Trump here -- Trump's lies and misconceptions are more likely to be exposed and obvious to more of the populace than Clinton's would be.
Clinton was much more technically qualified to be President of the United States, although supporting some questionable foreign policy decisions (such as the Iran deal) does not give me extreme confidence in her decision making skills. So, advantage to Clinton on this aspect.
However, what would probably have tipped me towards Trump, if I was faced with making the awful choice, would be the Supreme Court. I think judges should apply the law, not make it or fix it to match their social, religious, or political preferences -- if the law is broken, in their opinions they can suggest that maybe the legislature might want to look at fixing it but until it's "fixed", they should apply it. This President was likely to have the opportunity to seat two or three justices on the Supreme Court (obviously Scalia's replacement is one of these) and these are lifelong appointments that could shape the court for 30 years, long after the day-to-day stench of a Clinton or Trump term in office is hopefully little but a a trivial pursuit question (barring WWIII). Trump proposed a list of possible nominees who tended towards reading the Constitution and the law as written, not as they wish it were written. Clinton has consistently chosen to advocate laws that pretend the Second Amendment does not exist or is, at a minimum, not of the same "class" as, for example, the First Amendment or Fourteenth Amendment or Fifth Amendment. Therefore, I had little confidence that she would nominate SCOTUS justices who, themselves, followed the "apply the law, do not make it or fix it" judicial philosophy.
There's little reason not to try it if you like meat. The decision to consume it regularly would be based on price and quality. The quality could, eventually, be much higher (and the environmental impact much lower) than hoof grown meat.
A blob of meat grown in a vat has no intrinsic need for tendons, bones, silverskin and big chunks of fat -- none of which I want in a steak (but, lab grown bacon better have a lot of fat in it in chunks!). As well, if done right, imagine how perfect the marbling could be!
However, I'm not holding my breath because I'm picky about texture. For example, I refuse to eat, except when I have no options, "press formed" turkey and think the package of meat in the grocery should be required to have a term like "Press Formed" in letters at least as large as the largest used for the word "Turkey" within two font sizes away and that every use of the word "Turkey" should be preceded by the term "Press Formed" (or whatever word the FDA picks to describe this abomination that is sold as "turkey").
Those blobs of meat in the vat better get good exercise to make the texture correct (the good news is that they probably only need to be exercised during the day so solar panels can power the electrodes).
Most libertarians I know believe in the sanctity of contracts and support having a government civil court system to enforce those contracts. Of course, there are many different flavors of libertarians and some do believe in anarchy with no laws but I don't believe that is the majority.
Although "open ended" questions are good for some things, and I try to ask them, they are generally not appropriate for ten minute interview coding questions - especially for senior people.
In the real world, the code one writes is generally operating in substantial context which arose from design, not raw coding - often as part of a much larger system the developer is participating in building, enhancing, or maintaining but sometimes (such as in the case of a library you are distributing) that context is virtually entirely contained in an interface spec. This context is generally quite extensive and, especially in the case of the code being part of a system you are building, well embedded in developers' minds. The more careful a developer is, the more she considers this context. When deprived of context, she could spend ten minutes of what I intended to spend just ten minutes on just getting the requirements down and not actually getting to solving the problem. This is counter to the primary goal of coding exercises for senior people -- to flush out those who actually can't code their way out of a wet paper bag in spite of their claims and/or to identify if the candidate has a grasp of a particular concept.
For example, I regularly pose a simple programming problem involving multithreading and concurrency that flushes out the inability to write a tiny bit of decent code and meet requirements without overengineering, while also giving me insight into if the candidate has a clue about concurrency issues.
I expect senior people to give me a correct answer (there's one tiny twist I leave in and if they seem to be having a problem with that, they get only tiny demerits and I give them a five word hint which almost always results in an "ah, yes, of course" type of response and they go on to solve the problem) and the good ones almost always do.
"Fresh outs" with limited experience very rarely solve the problem correctly (which actually surprised me at first, but it just seems to be a reality). With them, I'm looking to see if they do stupid things like just layering antipatterns on antipatterns in a vain attempt to fix their code, if they can follow my example of where their code fails, or if they keep insisting their code is correct (when I've just proven otherwise). I prefer a "Hmm... I afraid I can't figure this one out, I'd need more time and research to solve it" -- at which point I may give them the simplest solution and ask them to review it and explain to me what it does to make sure they can read code and follow it.
The problem is almost as completely specified as I can reasonably make it. The "best" answer is about six C/C++ statements and I've never seen a correct answer that was more than about twice that complexity. I try to tell the candidate what NOT to worry about. For example, I tell the candidate:
I also tell them that the best solution I've seen is not more than ten executable statements (this to make set some general expectations of the expected complexity). I stress that correctness is an absolute requirement and more important than anything else (such as code length).
I also tell them that if they have any concerns about any aspect of the problem to ask me if they should concern themselves with those aspects before expending energy on doing so. I do this because there is a one aspect that I intentionally leave unspecified as a launchpad for later discussion with candidates that solve the problem successfully. However, out of the many times I've posed this
Nope. The brokerage firm was fine with this situation and were not surprised by it at all - I doubt very much that it was a bug. It might have created an alert to an account manager somewhere who let it remain -- I wouldn't know. There may well have been a higher level check somewhere that made sure that all of my accounts, collectively, didn't have a negative balance -- I don't know. The negative balance was tens of dollars and not worth anyone bothering me about or me doing anything about - in the end it settled out through natural account activity. It might even have been less than the commission on the activity that caused it.
Hello, my name is Anonymous Coward. I am a software developer.
I was talking to you about a database kernel position which is a field I have spent much of my career in and in one case was a key member of the design/coding team developing the initial (and several subsequent) releases of a revolutionary enterprise class scalable DBMS which is still being sold over thirty years later and in production at many of the biggest companies. You, of course, must have known that because you contacted me and, unusually, I decided to stop by and chat with you because I have a soft spot for startup companies, database, and engineering managers who look around seeking talent themselves rather than relying solely on recruiters. You asserted that your startup was developing an enterprise class scalable DBMS system so it seemed like it might be interesting.
You then asked me to write, on the whiteboard, a 'debit/credit' function that took three arguments and returned, IIRC, the amount transferred (admittedly that was a little odd). The first two arguments were account objects (passed by reference if I recall) representing the source and destination accounts respectively and the third argument was an amount (presumably in the same currency as both accounts were maintained in) to transfer (a float if I recall -- that, of course, is likely stupid in itself when dealing with currency).
I, understandably, was perplexed -- you must want something more than this simple function (I'm not fresh out of high school looking for a summer job) and I tried to get more requirements out of you and got none except when I asked if this function was to provide its own concurrency control or if a higher level would have insured both accounts were sufficiently locked you said something like "Okay, you need to provide the locking" and agreed that I could assume existence of "Acquire/ReleaseWriteLockAccount(AccountObject)" functions.
Okay -- so I'm thinking this is a concurrency problem, no problem (still lame, but okay...). Obviously I need to deal with deadlock potential so I ask if I there is some unique attribute of each account (you didn't give me a description of the account object's public members) that had a well defined order that I (and other developers) agreed to use to order locks when locking multiple accounts to eliminate or at least reduce deadlocks. You weren't prepared for the question so I asked if I could assume (I think) that the account number was a public field, unique among all accounts, and supported the LessThan operator with traditional semantics. You said, sure.
I wrote the code making sure to lock the accounts in order of account number, transfer the funds, unlock correctly and return the required value.
You were not happy -- what you really wanted me to check, it turns out, was that the source account would not end up with a negative balance and fail to do the transfer and return 0 as the result.
What you didn't seem to realize is that in the real world cash balances on individual accounts go negative sometimes. In fact, at that instant, I had one (of multiple) accounts at one brokerage firm which had had a small negative cash balance due to an inter-account transfer out for over six months and no one cared because I had multiple accounts at that firm with a net value of well over a million dollars and cash balances (well, "cash equivalents"), overall, of a few hundred thousand dollars.
Both of us made a decision in that discussion. You decided you didn't want to hire me. I decided I would never work for you or your company as I didn't want to risk working on/at a team/company which was so poor at evaluating people and would pass on good developers who know how the real world works and would likely hire unqualified people who answered your kindergarten questions the particular way you wanted.
Of course, I was glad that we both made those decisions because your company seems to have never got past a very modest A round and seems to have disappeared off the face of the Earth quietly.
You are completely missing the point.
Everyone is a member of several protected classes (we are all of some gender and some mix of races for example).
Those that happen to be in a minority group within a class toss that into lawsuits as a reason they are not getting what they want even though they are completely wrong or are, more strategically, using the claim as a bargaining chip. Lawyers are much more likely to take these cases when they really don't have merit because the chances of settlement are higher as the risk of finding a sympathetic (aka gullible) jury is higher, the risk of bad PR if the case goes to trial is higher, and it's one more claim that needs to be defended which increases the cost of litigation (even if they win) for the defendant. Those that are in a majority group within a class don't have the leverage because of the public notion that the majority can't be discriminated against.
Ellen Pao is a great example of someone who, in spite of much support and mentoring, just wasn't cut out for the job she wanted as a senior partner (which was pretty clear from testimony) but she got a lawyer to take her case on gender discrimination grounds. The vast majority (all?) of the 20 or 25 people, almost certainly mostly men, who were passed over before her didn't do the same (perhaps because they were not as arrogant and could recognize that they didn't have the necessary traits and skills) and just moved on. Had the men attempted to make a false claim that they were passed over because of gender instead of skills and traits, they would never have found a lawyer to take the case anyway (California is an "at will" state).
Umm... Look at the comment I was responding to and then think again. It's okay, I'll wait for you -- I know it's hard for you to read. Also, take a bit more time and read the GP as well.
Tick, tock...
Okay, 20 minutes later after you found someone to read (and explain to you) the comment I was responding to:
perhaps you will understand.
You see, the point that was raised in the GP was that perhaps all "peons" in the building, male and female alike, were "harassed" by being required to work 90 hour weeks etc. In that case, those who are not a member of a protected group are unlikely to find a lawyer to take a case on the pretense that somehow they were selectively picked out for mistreatment based on their membership in that class (when in fact they were not).
Nope, I wasn't arguing that point at all -- nice strawman. However, there is no claim here that someone (male, female, or other) exposed themselves to this engineer -- let alone actually touched her with their exposed genitalia.
What grounds would a male, esp. a white able-bodied straight male, have to sue if he was legitimately a salaried employee? He wouldn't be part of any actual or de-facto protected class. It's legal to expect salaried workers to finish their work even if it takes extra effort.
Huh? What maid offers their (why do you assume "her"?) services to the "general public"? Maids will turn down clients because their house is too hard to clean, because they don't like the homeowner's pets (perhaps the maid is allergic to cats) or just because they think the potential client is creepy or seems like someone who would be a pain to deal with.
So, if Uber is the exact same service as taxis, why did the government put all these burdensome regulations on taxis? Blame the government and the rent seeking taxi drivers -- not Uber. If all that regulation resulted in a superior product, presumably many/most people (who can afford it) will pick a taxi over Uber and Uber would just be a service for the poor who will enjoy increased mobility and flexibility that they didn't have before Uber. Seems like a win-win for all.
That suits me fine. Of course, one has to make the call at the right time (or a bit before the right time) and not second guess because of impact it may have on others (such as a spouse who has made a different choice but is still somewhat aware).
When you are 95 years old and no longer competent, if you don't have kids you are far more likely to end up with someone who doesn't really care about you at all hired (at your expense) by the state to make decisions for you. Kids are no guarantee of course, but they are probably your best bet (if you treat them well) to avoid this fate -- except, of course, blowing your brains all over the wall before you get to that state.
Elsewhere I read that LG recommended a simple workaround. Just put your wireless router in a Faraday cage and your LG monitor will work fine when it's nearby the router.
Although they recommend a certified LG brand "Wireless Router Faraday Cage" that they will be launching soon, I understand that Monster Cable will also be announcing one that works better -- something to do with the gold content and balanced geometry apparently.
If a potential employer doesn't understand situations like that, you don't want to work for them anyway. Usually the only reason to offer one's last/current/recent salary is if asked - rarely would it make sense to "lead" with that information.
Sure, that's why members of my groups have been well paid historically. Tech is hard -- and too many people who think they possess the necessary skills, don't. you have to pay to attract and retain the good ones (and, frankly, get rid of any hiring mistakes as quickly as possible).
It is a reality that most tech training except on proprietary systems is going to be self directed -- most good techies are curious and intrigued by technology. The days of expecting to work for one or two companies for your entire career are long gone - five years is a fairly long time now. With that change (which, overall, has been good in my opinion -- much more cross pollination and skill differentiation), companies have much less motivation to invest in training. As well, honestly, much formal training is a waste of time -- if you want to learn a new area or skill, once you're a seasoned professional, it's usually more efficient to do it on your own rather than listening to, watching, or reading structured course material that covers stuff you've already figured out while glossing over that which you are curious about.
I don't understand why people assume that salary information is the only, or even a very significant part, of a hiring or salary decision. There are many factors and salary history is just one small piece of the equation. If you don't trust a company to not abuse that information, why are you bothering to interview with them -- why would you assume they wouldn't abuse you in other ways after hiring you?
Of course I understand that some companies are "cheap" (or just small and granting options instead of high salaries). Where did you get the impression I didn't understand that?
I've never failed to extend an offer based primarily on salary history. However, on some occasions salary history has lead me to look closer at some areas and discover that I didn't want to extend an offer. Perhaps, for example, I know someone who worked with the person in the past and wouldn't have reached out to them if not for the odd low pay at a company that generally paid well and, in that process, discovered that the candidate was technically skilled on the surface (as they may have demonstrated in the interview process) but couldn't actually complete projects because they over optimized or over generalized.