Is it just a time sheet/app where developers track their time or is it spyware like Upwork's screen capture tracker?
Be wary of any developer who agrees to install spyware. These are either entry level developers or really crappy devs.
I have both worked as freelancer and hired freelancers. I find these spywares extremely insulting. We are not high school kids working in fast food joint. We are professionals & business owners.
As a freelancer, if a company asked if I would install spyware on my machine, it indicated that it was probably badly run company. If it was optional I would ask how many other devs had the spyware on their machines. If there were more than 1 or 2 devs, it just meant I would be working with bad devs and just declined contracts. Same if it was required. Pretty much all those companies had issues with their devs and had to scrap projects or start over.
And when I hired freelancers, if a freelancer indicated they had no problem with spyware, it set off all kinds of red flags. And every single time if I hired such developer, they were horrible and needed a lot of hand holding.
For me, most courses move too slow and it is really hard to find anything specific from watched videos.
With books & written tutorials, I can scan whole page in 1-2 seconds and skip if needed. And if need to retrieve information from previous sections, I can either use find command. In case of physical books, it is still faster then scanning through videos.
As a Pakistani-American, I can confirm, this is exactly how many people from my culture also work, though not as extreme as 9-9. We may take long lunches, go for multiple coffee breaks, walks, etc. May even watch some Bollywood movies while working.
But as a father, this is horrible work schedule. Culturally, it is totally acceptable for fathers to just provide but not really interact with their kids. Also there is an aspect of heroism of fathers working long hours to provide. And then, unfortunately, for some there is no option but to work long hours because they need extra money.
But some men would rather stay away from their children and let moms or grandparents raise the them. And I do know some such men. They stay late at work to avoid their families, they even bring their gaming laptops to work, so they can game after 5 and avoid their families. Honestly, work is a walk in a park compared to being a good father.
But it is hard to tell who is avoiding their families, who is staying late because of cultural pressures, and who really need to work late hours to provide for their families.
I graduated in early 2000s, and I heard same things from CS students/graduates and self-taught developers. They all said the golden age of computer science was 60s, 70s, 80s, or early 90s when people got into computers for love of it not money. Now everyone is computers for money.
Sadly though I did meet a lot of students in my CS program who were in it for money and openly admitted they hate programming, logic, etc and cannot wait until they get a job and then move into management.
Until this job search, I usually had two interviews, one technical screen and one behavior interview. And this was for senior roles. And usually, I almost always got offers. Most of the time, I was deciding between two jobs.
I think everyone is trying to replicate FAANG's success by copying their hiring practices. Maybe this is a hazing ritual to find really obedient workers.
Either way, we have to play this game and keep trying.
Glad that I am not alone. Just got another rejection email. No LeetCode, problems seemed realistic, I solved them all. Really have no idea what they were looking for.
This was my 4th application where I was rejected after final round. A lot more where I didn't get past initial screening etc. Feeling down right now.
I have 15 years of technical experience, I never got a chance to specialize but I can handle everything, DevOps, database, frontend, & backend. Perhaps that's my fault for just getting work done instead of focusing on my career. Perhaps I am getting really old for this industry. Maybe I really should go in the management.
Once someone explained tolerance vs philosophy of tolerance that made sense to me.
Tolerance is just a word that means that you are okay with things that you find annoying/repulsive. E.g. you were annoyed but tolerated flight delays.
Philosophy of tolerance is that you belief that all people deserve to live in peace even if you don't agree with their lifestyle, skin color, religion etc. AND if you really believe in it, you will fight against any ideas that disagree with this philosophy.
The tolerance as philosophy is not a logical problem. It is dealing with human behavior. It doesn't require that in order for you to adhere to it, you must also tolerate intolerance. Though in my view, sometimes it is okay to stay quiet when your racist uncle is whining about "others" at family dinner.
> WHILE also saving them money on unemployment insurance payments
In Texas, severance package has no impact on unemployment payments. I was laid off once with 3 months of severance pay and also got full unemployment payments.
In my current tech company, there have been many layoffs, they all usually got 2-6 months of severance.
Not yet, but I have bookmarked this post and will likely buy a few books from here: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30497703]
You are not alone, I think many of us have made similar mistakes. I have also recently made a bad career mistake, I was being promoted to management but without salary increase so I turned it down. Also I lacked confidence in my management abilities. But now I wish I had taken the job, gained confidence, and looked for salary increase by switching the company.
A few suggestions, at least, I am doing these for myself:
* Volunteer to mentor and lead without official title
* Read books on management
* Improve public speaking skills
* Seek mentors and be mentor to others
* Focus more on building my network instead learning new of technical skills
Wouldn't it would be great if pricing was simpler. I work for a Cloud provider too, and I keep pushing for simpler pricing models. My team/service does actually uses simpler per unit billing with no tiers or region. Discounts/contract rates are applied at account level at but any client could easily predict their actual cost, if we provided them realtime before-discount cost.
But other teams seem to replicate AWS pricing models, I assume to stay competitive with it.
Same experience. It is so hard to have a conversation about any of the security requirements with our security team because they have no idea what they are asking.
They only know to press some buttons and then send some reports.
Currently, living in an upscale townhouse in DFW suburbs, 10% of our combined income goes to mortgage and HOA.
Looking for single family residence since we have kids now, and it seems if we want to live in similar upscale neighborhood with good schools, we will need to put 25% towards mortgage & HOA. 2 years ago, it would have been only 12-15%.
It is not their concern what I do on social media. It is unfortunate that there is so much power imbalance that most employees are afraid to criticize their employers in public.