+1 on this answer. Ideally any interviewer intentionally sets aside time to answer your questions. If it's a total one way street that'll tell you something about the company.
In our interview process we have an informal session totally dedicated to answering the candidate's questions about anything. The setup is simple, two of our engineers and the candidate hop on a call (or meet in person) and just talk.
Many of the folks who have accepted our offers refer back to that session as the thing that really sealed the deal for them.
Reminds me of another Polish pianist (now past): Mieczysław Horszowski.
Horszowski, also a child prodigy, had his debut in Vienna in in 1902 at the age of 10. [1]
Horszowski's final performance took place in Philadelphia in October 1991 [age 99]. He died in that city a month before his 101st birthday. He gave his final lesson a week before his death. [2]
It's difficult for some managers to measure the productivity of knowledge workers and unfortunately they resort to tracking the number of hours there are "butts in seats". If your organization is like this you'll see people who are at work to be seen being at work, even if they're not being productive.
Japanese salarymen are the pathological example of this but I'm sure it manifests everywhere.
I'm nothing more than an amateur musician but I had the chance to study with Charlie Banacos and one of the things Charlie emphasized was avoiding relying on muscle memory.
All the exercises I received from Charlie forced me to be consciously engaged in the act of playing- never outsourcing things to muscle memory.
I think that largely this was to avoid falling into mechanically playing over changes and to be actively engaged in thinking about the music at the moment it was happening and responding to it creatively.
The Poles set up a cryptography program for mathematics students at Poznań University in 1929[1]. I believe Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Różycki we're all associated with that program.
I saw Mike Stonebraker while he was on his VoltDB "tour" a few years back. He makes the same arguments. In his talk he walked through the history of database technology and discussed a similar "war" between CODASYL and SQL. He framed that debate in terms of the split between separating the concerns of your data's structure (schema) from application logic.
Fairly or not, he suggested the current fight between noSQL/Schemaless vs SQL/RDBMS was being fought in ignorance of all that went on in the 70s.
Linkable Networks was founded on the premise that the disconnect between digital media and physical retail was a major gap in delivering a great experience to consumers. Since 2011, we’ve been nose-down building a scalable platform that provides brands and retailers the ability to engage, reward and incent their consumers directly and across any channel – online, mobile and in-store. We pioneered the concept of card-linked-offers and have taken it to the next level – always-on loyalty. Both our self-service and SaaS-based platforms enable the creation of actionable ads, coupons, offers, promotions, rebates and more that let you reward loyalty... not just discount a purchase. This is the future of Loyalty.
* Technology Stack
Java, Spring, Sharded MySql, Hazelcast, RabbitMQ
* Additional Info
We're wired into card networks and processors. We have a broad range of customers from grocery giant SuperValu where we're deployed with a first of its kind card-linked SKU offer solution to FanBank where we help enable community based Loyalty programs.
We run an agile shop with 103 successful sprints under our belts. Our process has been improved over the 6 years we've been running it so that we deliver on time and without drama. Our engineers don't sit in meetings they build solutions.
* Benefits
Health and dental benefits, 401K, Short/Long Term disability insurance, Life insurance, Section 125 & Section 132 plans, paid time off, stock options, remote work opportunities, other perks and a great work environment are part of the compensation package.
If this sounds interesting, please shoot me an email at [email protected]
Linkable Networks was founded on the premise that the disconnect between digital media and physical retail was a major gap in delivering a great experience to consumers. Since 2011, we’ve been nose-down building a scalable platform that provides brands and retailers the ability to engage, reward and incent their consumers directly and across any channel – online, mobile and in-store. We pioneered the concept of card-linked-offers and have taken it to the next level – always-on loyalty. Both our self-service and SaaS-based platforms enable the creation of actionable ads, coupons, offers, promotions, rebates and more that let you reward loyalty... not just discount a purchase. This is the future of Loyalty.
* Technology Stack
Java, Spring, Sharded MySql, Hazelcast, RabbitMQ
* Additional Info
We're wired into card networks and processors. We have a broad range of customers from grocery giant SuperValu where we're deployed with a first of its kind card-linked SKU offer solution to FanBank where we help enable community based Loyalty programs.
We run an agile shop with 102 successful sprints under our belts. Our process has been improved over the 6 years we've been running it so that we deliver on time and without drama. Our engineers don't sit in meetings they build solutions.
* Benefits
Health and dental benefits, 401K, Short/Long Term disability insurance, Life insurance, Section 125 & Section 132 plans, paid time off, stock options, remote work opportunities, other perks and a great work environment are part of the compensation package.
We're looking for solid Java engineers to join our team and help us build out the next level of capabilities on our platform.
If this sounds interesting, please shoot me an email at [email protected]
Sounds like a terrible situation. I wish those guys luck.
One useful sys ops practice is the creation and yearly validation of disaster recovery runbooks. We have a validated catalog of runbooks that describe the recovery process for each part of our infrastructure. The validation process involves provoking a failure (eliminate a master database), running the documented recovery steps and then validating the result. The validation process is a lot easier if you're in the cloud since it's cheap and easy to set up a validation environment that mirrors your production env.
In our interview process we have an informal session totally dedicated to answering the candidate's questions about anything. The setup is simple, two of our engineers and the candidate hop on a call (or meet in person) and just talk.
Many of the folks who have accepted our offers refer back to that session as the thing that really sealed the deal for them.