That said, I think he just means "do the work to get tests in place, and build the habit of running them as part of your development cycle", even if, when starting, what you're running isn't helpful. The idea being that building "write a test" "run the tests" into your iterative loop, from the beginning, is a worthwhile practice.
Oof, that rings familiar. I was anti-authoritarian as a kid, but not as a "rebel against the man" or anything so much as the concept of authority from position being completely alien to me. I respected authority from knowledge mind you; someone who knew things I didn't I would listen to, ask questions of, seek to understand; when it became clear I knew more than the teacher, had better understanding, etc, I would disconnect and stop listening to them.
I'm mildly on the spectrum, and my view toward punishment as a kid is that it was misguided as well. I don't think it harmed my relationships with my parents, exactly (not directly anyway; the underlying personalities/values maybe), but it definitely introduced me to the fact they were flawed human beings who didn't know what they were doing, which has never 'corrected' in adulthood (i.e., I don't look back and go "in hindsight what they did was for the best", and I'm quite certain that if I behaved similarly due to stress/fear, I'd be apologizing for it immediately after).
Rather, what I was constantly looking for (and still am), was the "why" of things. Attempts to influence my behavior without first influencing my understanding led to friction and were the reasons they tried punishment (which never really worked). I didn't generally go out of my way to disobey them, but if we were at odds they had to explain it well enough for me to understand where they were coming from. This worked better with my mom who seemed to have a better understanding of my needs; my dad was more authoritarian and seemed to expect me to just listen due to the nature of the relationship (which in hindsight is funny, as while he is very much "the rules are the rules" when it came to other people, as soon as he had a reason he felt was good to disobey them, he would; he never really empathized with "other people might have good reasons to disobey the rules or otherwise feel they're unfair too", which helped me understand his political leanings).
Yep, it was purely calling out the irony I saw in that.
I in fact I completely agree with the criticisms, though I personally find high level things like the list helpful at times because it causes me to think or provides me a heuristic to engage with. "When you lead, your real job is to create more leaders, not more followers" for instance, is not directly actionable, but it's a solid summation of and validation of a lot of the more tactical decisions, risks, and investments in people I've made as a manager. It's not directly actionable, but it succinctly puts into words a series of tradeoffs I've intentionally made in the past, which is helpful. Others on the list -are- directly actionable; for instance, I -did- use it as an excuse to go pull up a city tourist guide...and I found a few restaurants I now intend to check out, including a Spanish one with a Flamenco show that my wife will probably love, that I didn't even know existed.
I actually find specific advice very hit or miss (mostly miss); I've seen similar comments on journaling in the past, and I haven't found it helpful for me. Whereas anything I can hold in my head (and aphorisms fit, if as I thought about them I found them to hold weight, rather than just being truly empty statements, tautologies or statements of empty optimism that are meant to make you feel good rather than influence a decision) means it can pop up when suitably relevant and influence my behavior. For instance, with relationships, I missed my grandfather's funeral. Not a big deal to me at the time; he was dead, and I'd get to see my grandmother a few month's later at Christmas time when the semester was over. Except...she passed the day I was supposed to drive down. And it further drove a wedge between me and members of my family (that initially was there due to circumstances beyond my control) that I've only really begun to overcome in the past few years. All of that means I periodically, at random, have "what relationships are you neglecting?" pop into my head, as well as in response to certain occurrences (weddings and funerals are always a "yes" from me now, no matter how much of an inconvenience it is), and that implies action; "Oh, I haven't heard from my cousin in a while, let me just check in with her", etc.
Most credit cards that do offer it only offer it as secondary coverage. I.e., it'll first hit any personal car insurance coverage you have, and in that case the card will cover the deductible.
For ones that provide primary coverage, Amex's premium coverage is very good, and will run you ~$25 per rental period (not day, period, up to 42 days), but you have to call (once) to get it added to the card. It doesn't include liability or uninsured motorists, but for just "hey, something happened, the car got damaged, but I don't want to be able to just walk away and not worry about it", it's an easy, braindead option.
>> Does anyone else get a kick out of "hiding" your wealth?
So a number of people are commenting along the lines of "why would you want to care what others think" but I get where you're coming from.
One of the occasions I remember being most tickled by, for -hours- after it happened, was when I was walking to work, wearing just street clothes, my laptop in my backpack, and a woman in a pantsuit asked if I needed help. I was legitimately confused, but then realized - I was walking through a parking deck, underneath a bunch of corporate offices, early in the morning. From her perspective, I was a vagrant. From mine, I lived in the nearby luxury condos/apartments that shared the parking deck (it was a mixed use build, residential, commercial, corporate), was headed to a software job where jeans and a hoodie were expected, belongings are carried in backpacks not suitcases, and the easiest way to get to the shuttle stop on the other side of a super busy street was to go under it via the parking deck.
Another time was when I was buying my first suit with my mom, and got given a massive discount that was not advertised, because the proprietor could see we weren't dressed expensively. We were dressed fine, street clothes, and could afford full price, but he assumed we couldn't (but my mom being a divorced school teacher and me not working yet, the discount was appreciated).
It's not caring what others think, it's finding amusement in the way assumptions and expectations play out.
Not to mention the reply left out my original "possibly also a major change in financial status, relationship, etc", since my entire point was that late term abortions, while for a variety of reasons, are not simply people taking the most expensive, most traumatic, most controversial option as a form of contraceptive. It's for a variety of nuanced, complex reasons that aren't "for convenience", as the convenient path is always to abort or prevent the pregnancy earlier. Which is why pro-choice advocates say it should be between the woman and her doctor, -not- government; the fact the situation is arising at all means it is exceptional.
And homosexuality, despite it not resulting in children. And welfare. And mandatory paid maternity leave. And...basically everything that would actually ensure children are not a burden on the parent.
Most abortions are as soon as the woman knows she's pregnant. Very, very few are late term, and, as a sibling mentions, those are almost universally due to health risks (possibly also a major change in financial status, relationship, etc).
To be clear, you are right that a late term abortion is pretty horrific. They're also -traumatic-. No one is -intentionally- waiting around to get an abortion; there isn't room for political argument here because anyone who finds themselves pregnant at a late stage and doesn't want to be is already in the case of "reasonable exception". A medical complication, a change in financial status to where she can't support it (when before she thought she could), etc.
No one is finding out they're pregnant in the first trimester, and then just can't make up their mind until the third, and we as a society need to set a date she has to make up her mind, or force her to keep it against her will. That's a made up justification, and as we continue to see, the same forces that make that justification don't even stop there.
The wording you quote, "Of the Germanic family, English is exceptional", implies English is a Germanic language. One that borrows heavily from Latin, but still, a Germanic language.
Also from wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_influence_in_English
"English is a Germanic language, with a grammar and a core vocabulary inherited from Proto-Germanic. However, a significant portion of the English vocabulary comes from Romance and Latinate sources."
English borrows from both quite heavily (for historical reasons listed there), to where I don't know that classifying it makes a lot of sense, but having dabbled with both, just from a language learning perspective, I'd say German definitely feels closer. Some simple counterexamples -
"What is that?" - "Was ist das?" vs "Que es eso". Same grammatic structure, but obviously very similiar words between German and English. Not so much Spanish. The Latin is "quid est".
"I see him" - "Ich sehe ihn" vs "Lo veo". English and German are very similar in both grammar and word; Spanish is very different from both, putting the direct object before the verb as it does, and not requiring the subject (yo). The Latin is "i videre eum".
So I've actually written about this in the past, but, responsibility is -actually effecting the entity-.
That is, "you're responsible for this" - if they do it, and it succeeds, what happens? If they don't do it, and it fails, what happens? If the answer is "nothing" in either of those cases, they're not actually responsible. If the result is too detached, they're also not actually responsible (i.e., if I decide not to do one of the ten tasks assigned to me, and I don't hear about it until review time, if at all, then I was never responsible).
Responsibility is innately tied with knowledge and empowerment, but without going on at length, and to just give an example - if I'm the one woken up by the pagerduty alarm when something breaks, I am responsible for that something, because its success or failure directly affects me. If, however, there is a separate ops team that has to deal with it, and I can slumber peacefully, responsibility has been diluted; you won't get as good a result.
First, a great deal of research shows that working past 8 hours of day for long stretches actually -reduces- overall output compared with working 8. Now, to be fair, the bulk of this research was done on physical labor, not mental, but interestingly, what research -has- been done on mental found the same thing, except the actual hours was more like...6.
Second, you're working at a place that actively -encourages- you to work unpaid overtime. That sees it happening and rather than saying "what can we do to prevent this and not risk burnout" instead says "good. Keep at it". If you're salaried, you're effectively getting paid a lower hourly rate for the work you're doing. So...not to beat this horse again...but...look for another job. It doesn't sound like the pay is great, it doesn't sound like the environment is great. The only thing keeping you there is a belief you can't get anything better; maybe that's true, maybe it isn't, but it certainly will be true if you don't at least look.
Get yourself on Linkedin. Find a tech focused resume writing service to help you with verbiage, both for your LinkedIn profile and your resume. Let recruiters know you're looking on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/67405/let-recr...). Start looking for roles in your area, and remote (and in any area you'd be willing to relocate to). That sounds like a better use of an hour a day than giving it, for the same price (free), to your current company, in the hopes of a 7% raise and higher expectations in the future.
Every place I've worked I've seen the same thing. Work/life balance is stressed as being important, BUT you will totally end up working extra hours if you cave to implicit pressures others set on you (oftentimes the business, product, etc). Someone will try and schedule you for a meeting at 5 PM, or say "we need this by next week", or whatever. And every place, I've said "No". Sometimes it's "I can't make that, I have to be home", sometimes it's "That isn't what we committed to this sprint" or even "That's what we committed but the sprint has been broken because (other thing)". Occasionally it's even been "Hey, we ran into something unexpected; even though we committed to that it isn't going to happen by that date".
On call pages happen; I always take time off the next day. As a manager, I -tell- my team to take time off the next day if they get paged.
Even where I am now, where I will have meetings scheduled at 7 AM, and 6 PM, routinely, I just close my laptop up in the middle of the day. Sometimes I'll even book time pre-emptively just to prevent people from trying to schedule me straight through (and thus leading to a > 8 hour day).
Etc. The perverse thing is that by doing this people actually get a -better- impression of me. There's an element of confidence; couple that with the fact I do deliver, and they don't question it or push back on it. And ultimately even if they wheedle enough I say "okay, fine, yeah, I have to talk to the guys in China; 6 PM meeting it is", I just book time 9-5 for my own stuff, or (when in the office), leave at like 3 so I can get home, unwind a bit, have dinner, and take that call, and still only work 8 hours.
I can't speak to Philly; you might be right. If you're tied to the area, consider remote. If you're not tied to the area, consider looking for things outside of it.
"The people most capable of taking the action items are assigned it. This could be expertise, resourcing, proximity, etc."
Expertise and proximity are facets of responsibility (well, technically they are facets of knowledge, but ideally knowledge, empowerment, and responsibility are aligned, else things ALSO won't get done). Resourcing is a red herring; I've seen things get assigned to teams based on "they have the capacity", without it being an area whose domain they're familiar with (i.e., they don't work in that area, and ergo are not responsible for the outcome) - those things rarely get done, and never get done well.
Glassdoor's tool is not very useful I've found. It only even somewhat works for salary, since it doesn't require bonus or equity incentives (which is sufficient in some markets, not others), leading to deflation of total comp. It also doesn't track things like overall years of experience, or how long a person has been in a position. All of those matter, as internal raises have tended not to match the market's increase; the lower end of the market is filled with people who have been in their position a long time, the upper end of the market is people who have job hopped recently, style of thing.
The past couple of jobs I've had I came in at the upper end of Glassdoor's reported salary, for the specific company even, even when I had relatively few years in the role, and without negotiation on my part. And Glassdoor didn't at all represent bonus and equity properly. Levels.fyi did a much better job of it (but has fewer data points for non-tech companies).
I have never worked extra hours to come up to speed (and in general haven't put in extra hours, though I've sometimes had to work weird schedules due to working with people across timezones), and have pretty consistently been a high performer.
I'd still recommend just doing some searching. Worst case, you validate that your current comp is the best you can get. Mediocre case, you find you could get paid better, but not doing anything you feel comfortable taking. Best case, you find something that is interesting and exciting and will pay you better.
If you're in the US, there is only an -infinitesimal- chance that they'll actually ask for references for a software job.
They'll likely run a background check and make sure your resume isn't obviously lying (they'll confirm start/end dates and title, basically), and make sure you're not a criminal, MAYBE do a credit and/or drug test.
That said, I think he just means "do the work to get tests in place, and build the habit of running them as part of your development cycle", even if, when starting, what you're running isn't helpful. The idea being that building "write a test" "run the tests" into your iterative loop, from the beginning, is a worthwhile practice.