secondaryditto

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

Keep American jobs for Americans! ;)

However, perhaps they just couldn't get the right killer at the right price? Or maybe they're scarcer than you think? We keep hearing immigrants are taking American jobs, but in reality they're taking the jobs no American would take in the first place, so this may be more simple supply/demand...

secondaryditto

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

my experience (as us-born/bred) is that this exists, but is more a personality trait than anything else. And some personality traits can co-exist among others with the same trait more easily, and that 'so excited' outward expression can often get amplified in a group, but even individuals can be like that. I don't see it as uniquely American, but... it may be somewhat here. By comparison, traveling in Russia, public displays of enthusiasm/positivity/emotion were far less common at all (although in small groups of friends they came out).

secondaryditto

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

Found someone who was playing Beatles in the background, half a world away, overnight in Dubai... (I know it's not live but it was still dark). Nice to have the sounds/ambiance as well as the video...

secondaryditto

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

"I'm just waiting for Maria to kill her children" is a valid tech sentence, but probably not something that should be uttered in a public setting. :)

secondaryditto

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

Recently worked with someone who... gotta say, it was a bit strange after a while. We're all remote, but he had no picture of himself, ever. Now... granted - there may actually be some visual reason - some disfigurement, for example - that the person is self-conscious of (hadn't originally thought of it).

However - we had no social media profile at all for this person. No pics of the person, alone or with friends.

We had no programming profile - no bitbucket/github/etc. I did find, later, a couple of public bug fixes from 2014 (this was in 2020) attached to this person, but no pic or any other work to tie it to.

The person was no more than a voice on a phone/webex.

It was just a strange experience, because the rest of the team - probably another 6 people or so - all had some degree of personal whatever - picture, blog, repo, camera during Webex for facial expressions.

Over time, it was just... odd. Then ... off. The person was recently let got from the project, but had communicated some weird stuff to me in private, which was troubling (moreso to have been told in the first place, because then I have to make a decision how to act on it).

I completely agree that we don't have to live online 24/7, people should have separation between work/life, we shouldn't judge people just based on a GitHub profile, and private life can (and should) be private. But taken to an extreme, where you end up just working with a faceless voice... had its drawbacks.

secondaryditto

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

not even safari 12.1

secondaryditto

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

given that the code wasn't actually forked in the first place, it probably wouldn't have mattered anyway. no?

secondaryditto

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

I worked with a colleague who had... 'interesting' ideas about software development. He'd put together a 'web framework' before joining the company, but was redeveloping a new one. It was... bizarrely weird, and was missing some 'normal' things like session management, authentication, etc.

I didn't care much, cause I didn't have to use it, but... reviewing it, it didn't make sense. People using it were having to take a lot of time to do basic stuff, and ... people were constantly waiting for the main guy to 'finish up' the next bit that would save everyone 'lots of effort'.

Some of the other 'sr' people there fawned over it - "he's a genius! this code and system is amazing. it's so hard to understand the brilliance, but that's because he's such a genius" (near exact quotes from his internal fans).

Again - wasn't on that team, didn't care. Then... I was told to use it. For a project that needed things well beyond what it had in place. We needed session mgt, authentication, caching, solid XML support, etc - everything this 'framework' didn't have. I criticized it, saying we shouldn't use it for this new project.

What complicated this is that I'd put together a framework before I'd started working there (with a team of other folks). It was far more feature complete (not great but functional). I was accused of being jealous, and wanting to use my system, etc. Well, yeah, I'd like to use my stuff, cause it checked the boxes we needed, and I'd used it for several years, and could be productive in it. But... I said "take my code off the table - it's not about me. System X is just not usable for our project needs - we need to plan to build something new, or spend time building out all the missing stuff."

What a shitstorm that became. Internal fighting between people who'd never looked at the code, but insisting it was fine, and that I didn't understand 'enterprise' work. I left - turned in my two week notice (not 100% over this, but it was a factor). The day after I left... the "genius" quit the company, without telling anyone, no notice, just... left a voicemail saying he quit.

secondaryditto

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

And... the Beatles were relatively unique in that they had a moderately wide range of style, certainly compared to their most of their contemporaries. Yes, grandparents in the 60s probably would have put up with Yesterday, Michelle, Till There Was You, A Taste of Honey and similar 'ballad/acoustic/soft' songs. They would not have put up with or enjoyed Long Tally Sally or Twist and Shout.

Source: Mother-in-law who was a young parent outside Liverpool in the mid 60s, relaying the reactions of her parents' generation to the Beatles and "beat/rock" music of the 60s.

secondaryditto

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

> However on mosy projects, you'll have the one guy who doesn't follow, or worse, the only one guy who follows the style. And so the prettifiers become absolutely necessary.

I'll bite - why, exactly, is this "absolutely necessary"? The justifications for needing style guides and linters that I get is usually something like "so we don't argue about this stuff". Well... I wasn't arguing in the first place - you were. And every project will have someone who wants to add their own preference in 'because'... so regardless of what you're in, nothing is 'standard', ever.

My experiences may be somewhat outside the norm, but in the last... 18 months or so, I've worked with 3 different teams (anywhere from 3 to 20+ other people) across php, js - angular/vue/node, java and ruby. There's been more in-fighting and bike-shedding about "standards" from people who tend to be the least productive.

I can fully admit some code is, sometimes, easier to read when formatted certain ways. No one seems to ever be able to admit or acknowledge that sometimes, it's very hard for me to read in their preferred style. I don't complain. I just ... get on with it.

Again, my experience may be different from others, but of the multiple folks I've dealt with in the past couple of years, the ones who were open vocal advocates about needing "standard" and forcing style/linting/etc on to projects - these people rarely ever found bugs in their own code or code from others, or spotted logical problems with the code, or, indeed, contributed tests. It's as if they equate 'code beauty' with the actual functioning of the code itself. "Hey, it looks good, I'm checking it in" - this is now reinforced with "hey, all my linting/style is passing - awesome - checking it in!"

I initially chalked this up to one person, but in my experiences, it's been a recurring trait/behaviour.

I jump between projects/contracts. I've never worked at one company on one project and one team for multiple years - the dynamics are certainly different from short term projects.

Current situation - two client projects.

Client A - fanatical about 'null==' because there was some bad assignment by mistake issue a few years back. This is a hard rule, and code will be blocked if you commit

    if (customer.id == null)

has to be

    if (null == customer.id)

I understand the value, but ... tests help catch those issues as well. But... my habit over the last 6 months has been to default to that.

However - working with client B

    if (null == customer.name)

"this is confusing - none of the other code uses this style, it's hard to read, stop doing it".

So, in the same week (sometimes, the same day), I have multiple competing styles in my head, and regardless of what I do, I have a productivity loss because something has to check/correct and I have to wait, or I have to recommit and re-push stuff because something was 'wrong' to someone. When you switch between "styles" enough, it begins to seem a bit cargo-cultish, to my eyes.

secondaryditto

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

did most of the subjects in renaissance paintings actually exist, or were they just imagined people/faces?

secondaryditto

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

Part of the reason you can get stuff done fast is precisely because you're not part of the company. The 'you should come work here full time' scenarios almost never seem to really get that point. The moment you come on 'full time', their perception of you changes, expectations of you change, and you're rarely likely to deliver what you could because of these changes.

secondaryditto

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

Earned around $130k in consulting last year. After deductions/expenses, US federal taxes were around $8k. Now.. FICA was something else (which I can't remember offhand), and state tax was something like $3k. Federal/state taxes where ~$11k. health insurance - that was around $10k.

secondaryditto

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

when I get my own clients directly, and I'm closer to that. When I'm subcontracted through someone else, it's typically < $100 ($70-$90). I consciously make that trade off sometimes because I'm effectively outsourcing some of the risk - negotiations, collections, etc. And it's sometimes got me in to projects on teams whereas I'd normally be an independent, and the dynamics and range of engagements I've had has been a bit wider because of it. The $120/hr+ engagements I've had tended to be shorter engagements - (< 6 months). The subcontract ones tend to be longer. While I know if I'm getting $80, the people selling me are getting $110 or more, again, I understand they're providing some service that I didn't particularly want to do (or... negotiated for a 9 month engagement, for example).

secondaryditto

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

I've had some discussions with folks on projects who are very... focused on linting and formatting rules. They've reformatted my code in the past, and have insisted on blocking code that doesn't pass all their listing rules.

Them: "We have to use these tools to avoid disagreements about spacing and formatting choices".

Me: "But... I wasn't having any in the first place. It's only the 3 of you that were having these disagreements. And now you're spending ridiculous time planning reformat of entire codebase, instead of actually... moving the project forward.

Please don't bitch about me using $x = new Temp(); in a test file. I'm the only person on the project even making test files, and you're blocking my TEST file because you don't like variable name style..."

They got in to a quandary when trying to inline some JS in to a PHP view file. The PHP standard is 4 spaces, and the person doing some of the JS had defined 2 spaces for JS ("so we can all agree on it") and ... all hell broke loose trying to determine what the style/formatting should be for JS-inside-PHP files. 4 spaces? 2 spaces?

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